Scandinavian collective Twenty Committee announce debut EP 'Minutes Vol. 1', out November 20th
LISTEN TO ‘MINUTES, VOL 1’ HERE
Having spent the last year releasing a wave of bright and diverse dream-pop offerings, Scandinavian collective Twenty Committee, led by producer Anders Källmark, now announce the details behind their highly-anticipated debut EP ‘Minutes, Vol 1’.
Working entirely in collaboration with vocalist Chloe Rodgers, the new nine-track collection will include the previously shared singles ‘Bones’, ‘This Town’, ‘In A Rush’, ‘Something New’, ‘Sick Of It All’, and ‘John’, and is being previewed by the new lead track ‘Is It Real’.
Speaking about the new EP, Källmark said, “I always thought this was a great collection of songs. Some of them have however lived quite the tough life and did not really feel good and comfortable with themselves until they met Chloe’s fantastic voice."
Much like all of their material to date, the new track ‘Is It Real’ looks to capture that bright and uplifting sensibility they are always looking to pursue. With Rodgers effortless vocals layered over a warm and enticing piano-led composition, their newest delight cements them as a firm and atmospheric outfit with an almost unending creative spirit.
Adding about ‘Is It Real’, the producer said, "Less is of course always more, in the case of the beautiful is it real, even less is most definitely even more"
LISTEN TO ‘IS IT REAL’ HERE
Twenty Committee will release their debut EP ‘Minutes, Vol 1’ on 20th November. See the EP’s full tracklist below.
Tracklisting:
Bones (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
This Town (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
John (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
Sick of It All (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
Something New (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
Is It Real (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
In A Rush (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
Stay (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
Miss You (Feat. Chloe Rodgers)
They may or may not have taken their name from a counter-espionage operation, or that’s what they would like you to think anyway. Twenty Committee is the brainchild of Anders Källmark, an acclaimed music producer, composer and engineer, who has always had a direct and deliberate approach to the sound he is looking to create. Born in Sweden and a long-term resident of Stockholm now residing in London, Källmark came to the UK to study before quitting to pursue a career at Sony Classics, where he worked with composer Richard Horowitz, and has also been the mastermind behind the new EP ‘Whale’ from rising Swedish songstress Rebecka Reinhard.
As the power behind renowned record label Crowds and Power, an imprint named after an Elias Canetti book, published in 1960, that focuses on the dynamics of crowds and packs and asks why crowds obey the power of rulers, his label looks to take an equally rebellious route as it navigates the music turmoil to uncover truly hidden gems snuck into the fabric of our lives.
Correspondingly, as part of Crowds and Power’s diktat, Källmark has recruited a collection of Swedish and British songwriters and vocalists who make Twenty Committee’s debut EP ‘Minutes’ something of an esoteric masterpiece. Amongst its rotating cast of characters lies Chloe Rodgers, a 23-year-old singer whose voice is so fiercely independent that she is in danger of becoming the Liz Fraser of the enterprise, and an artist that Källmark discovered whilst trawling through YouTube.
Originally from Nottingham, Rodgers’s vocal delivery is so obviously unaffected – and so delicately nuanced - you could be forgiven for thinking she could be of Scandinavian origin, or even Bjork’s younger sibling. This is particularly apparent on ‘Bones’, one of the more extraordinary songs that make up ‘Minutes’. ‘Bones’ is about jealousy and kicks off like Brian Eno’s Airports before morphing effortlessly into the kind of dewy-eyed synth pop (featuring some lovely Cure-type guitar) you’ve all been waiting for. It’s revelatory, of course, although no more so than ‘This Town’, a song that features looped techno-violin string arrangements, a perfectly positioned vocal you could put your arms around, and a story line centred on our intrepid hero venturing into the big city for the first time.
Elsewhere, the bitterly-prescient ‘In A Rush’ is a post-punk Banshees/Bjork/Modern Eon-esque delight, spotlighting a murderously bad relationship - it’s Källmark’s favourite song of the collection – that includes a murderously-sampled loop of one note of a cello recorded on a tomato farm in South Africa, whilst ‘Something New’ is a deceptively-sweet, piano-led ballad featuring a protagonist with a pathological need to move on even as they appear to be happy as part of a relationship. Best of all, is ‘Sick Of It All’, a song that started on an upright piano – originally used by Ultravox back in their heyday – at RAK Studios, before being managed and massacred. Part of a Lost Future netherworld last explored by those performing at the 1980 Leeds Futurama Rock Festival, a sound writ larger on ‘John’, which is all double-tracked vocals and a weird Prophet VS sitting on top of countless levels of delay. Told you they were clever
With so much incredible new music on the horizon, Twenty Committee look set to become the next big name to emerge from Scandinavia. Bringing more of that diverse and ground-breaking aesthetic that we have come to love from that part of the world, Anders Källmark is a man with a purpose, and that is to give us the very best that his kaleidoscopic mind has to offer.
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