Trentemoller – Into The Great Wide Yonder review

Crossover albums often sound like an artist struggling with their identity and striving to be or sound like someone else. Yet with Trentemøller’s latest album, Into The Great Wide Yonder, the Danish producer delivers an exemplary such LP that sounds wholly natural and familiar. After all, Trentemoller has been hinting at this kind of transition for several years now: 2006’s critically acclaimed debut, The Last Resort was a crisp dance record swiftly followed by his first mix compilation, Harbour Boat Trips, which came loaded with varying sentiments of indie, rock and pop. His remixes too have also hinted at a penchant for pop and indie formats. As well as reworks of Depeche Mode and The Knife, Trentemøller has also remixed Franz Ferdinand, an effort which earned him a Grammy nomination.

His second artist album to date, Into The Great Wide Yonder showcases a broad range of musical ideas, arrangements and instruments. Made with a delightful and whimsical mixture of instruments, the album boasts both electronic and acoustic guitars, strings, a bass mandolin, theremin and a music box amongst a host of others. It sees the Dane experimenting with more organic and analogue textures as he mixes complex melodies with disparate and far reaching sounds, rhythms and genres. Also placing more emphasis on vocals we see a number of collaborations including Solveig Sandnes, Marie Fisker, Josephine Philip and Fyfe Dangerfield from UK act Guillemots.

Into The Great Wide Yonder completes Trentemøller’s transition from his roots as a dancefloor producer into the more instrument-led domain of pop and rock tinged electronica. Still using a driving kick drum as the core to the album, the In My Room head honcho is still very much part of the dance scene, but just not in the club focused way that we’re used to.

Review: Tom Jones