Cisser Mæhl is a danish composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist, currently living in Oslo. The 3rd of March 2023 she’s releasing her debut album Innemuseum at the Berlin label Sonic Pieces.
Innemuseum is undeniably a very personal record that sounds like the musical embodiment of Cisser herself. She sings in Danish in a close-miked way like she´s sitting right next to you, all while gentle rhythms and soft strings together create a sort of bright, minimal chamber music with hints of pop sensibility. It almost feels like a Scandinavian reflection of Colleen´s work in her more quiet, vocal periods. A music box of weightless compositions for the conscious mind.
Cisser is performing on our Digital in Berlin label night at KoncertKirken during the Copenhagen Vinterjazz Festival. Friday, February 10 along LOUFR and Dylan Peirce.
FACTS
1. Now and now and now is temporary. Bad times will pass.
2. Men earn and own more money than women (in 2023).
3. A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction (/music). Virginia Woolf.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
I love music and art because it’s magical. Not always but in drops. Nature and people can give the same feeling but most of all other things in life are very practical, logical and reasonable. Music and art is not reasonable. It’s fantasy, imagination, magic, it is surreal, supernatural. Maybe I also make music as an excuse to work with inspiring people. I have to contribute with something and that something is music.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I was studying at the art academy in Denmark and suddenly figured out it wasn’t really for me. So I started making music instead and almost by coincidence started at the music conservatory. Luckily everyone else was so much better than me in making music so I had the best teachers allround me all the time.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
I think some of the albums I was listening to as a young girl are quite important even though I have not listened to them for many years now: Björk; “Homogenic”, Sigur Rós; “Takk…” the danish band, Under Byen; “Det er mig der holder træerne sammen” og “Samme stof som Stof” and Savage Rose; “Black Angel”
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
I love Berlin. For danish people Berlin will always be an exotic, big, multicultural city. Different from quiet Copenhagen. Berlin is so full of history and new places to discover. I always enjoy going there and try to find new excuses to visite the city.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
My working space is my favorite place in Oslo. But else than that I like to walk up on top of the hill “Grefsenkollen” and eat my lunch and look at the city and the fjord from above and maybe collect blueberries on my way down through the forrest to the city again.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
I guess that means that people didn’t have ears and couldn’t listen to anything at all. I think I would be a cave painter then.
7. What was the last record/music you bought?
I’ve been compared with the French composer Colleen, so I’ve listened a lot to her music recently.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
I have so many good collaborations going on at the moment. It’s the best. I love working with inspiring people with other ideas, medias and backgrounds than myself. People from the film industry, the art world, the gaming industry, theatre, writers, what so ever.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
As a spectator it must have been a concert at Roskilde Festival, not a specific one but the state of walking from one concert to another without having slept or eaten enough but being surrounded by friends and discovering new music together. That’s a good feeling.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
It’s very important in that way that I would never have been a music producer and composer if it wasn’t for technology that have made music production so easy and cheap to set up in your own home.
11. Do you have siblings and how do they feel about your career/art?
Yes. I’m the first one working with music and art in the family so it wasn’t always easy to justify my choices of education when I was younger. But now my smaller sister, Anna Sophie Mæhl, is working in the same area, so my family is getting used to it.
