Jonas Torstensen - Den Falmede Dag

Kashual Plastik - Tape

Germany, 2026

Experimental / Folk / Lo-Fi

Another excellent new tape from Kashual Plastik! Warm and slightly ghostly (neo)folk for frosty days. Thought this kind of lo-fi & scrawny minimal chanson has become a much widely explored territory since roughly the early days of the pademic, Torstensen avoids the lack-of-spontaneity pitfall many musicians in that field felt for recently. Den falmede dag ("The Faded Day" in Danish) is as intuitive and evocative as early 2020’s favorites by The Sprigs, and somehow discreetly reminds of Jim O’Rourke, sharing with the Chicago musician a sense of generosity and gaiety. Music for the break of dawn.

Like the first signs of spring, Torstensen's music is embedded in a soil not completely unfrozen. One of the first songs on the tape, "Kedeligere og nogen gange gladere", with its sweeping piano ritournelle, signals the humble dawn that follows a long, profound winter night. As the still day quietly unfolds, the Danish musician effortlessly improvises dozing psychedelic guitar ballads ("Når det flyder ud over dig"), Laraaji meets Daniel Johnston's kind of Church music ("Dagene er alt for lange"), imaginary gospels about light in darkness, candle songs, clair-obscur music. 

Though made of a different cloth than Maxine Funke's fantastic Timeless Town tape  (that also came out on Kashual Plastik, a couple of months ago), it shares with the New-Zealand songwriter's that strong optimism, a sincere appreciation for joy that - as I recently noted -  also emanates from a bunch of releases that came out in the last few months or so (most notably in Turner Williams Jr's Vipérine LP). Persephonian hope put on tape, that coincidentally gets released around Aïd, Purim, Easter. (M/M - wholesale: shops, contact us)