The Album
Background
In November 2011, just two weeks before my 35th birthday, they discovered a tumour during a routine scan. Because the cancer in me was still at such an early stage, I was fortunate enough to avoid any chemotherapy or radiation treatment. The prognosis was positive – but the anxiety that accompanied the diagnosis was incredibly difficult to navigate.
I felt this urge to document what I was experiencing through music. But at the same time, I didn’t want to begin recording before my final hospital examination. Until I knew for sure that I was going to be okay. On October 16th, 2016, after five long years of regular CT scans, x-rays and blood samples, I left department 50 11 for the last time. I was clear.
That winter I began tracking the groundwork for these compositions on vintage analogue synthesizers together with my close friend Claus Norreen. Soon after, multi-instrumentalist Jakob Littauer and I recorded the piano parts on both an old, upright piano in a tiny studio and a Steinway Grand Piano in a concert hall - capturing these unique instruments in two contrasting spaces. The violin, viola and cello were composed and played by another dear friend, Italian composer Davide Rossi. This was the final piece of the puzzle. So, despite the immensely personal background of The Fifty Eleven Project, it’s important for me to mention that it was created in close collaboration with these musicians. I openly shared my story with them, so they would understand what I wanted to generate and express during our recording sessions. Each of their contributions has made this project into one coherent piece of work, and one which I am extremely proud of. I want to acknowledge their role in this, by crediting the album as the efforts of a quartet.
My ambition was always to create a soundtrack that captured the emotional rollercoaster of what I went through during those five years. A time when cancer played a central role in my life. I wanted to document both the darkness and the light, using these long stretched-out instrumental compositions as the narrative and the titles as a guideline. From the discovery of the tumour, to the operation and frequent hospital examinations; from experiencing a beacon of love and light in the birth of my son - in the very same hospital, just a stone throw from where I was in surgery - to finally leaving that waiting room clear. All the while, acknowledging that once you have been diagnosed with cancer, despite being cured, it will somehow always be a part of you.
Landon Metz created the album cover’s unique works specifically for this project. A huge honour for me. Landon´s art has this calm, almost rhythmical visual language - and I feel that together with the music, it creates this whole; in that sense, it has become an important part of the entire project. Looking at Landon´s creations and listening to the music is still a very calming, almost healing, experience for me.
Above all else, the project been a therapeutic way of me processing the cancer diagnosis, the constant fear of relapse and the light in being healed - and it feels like a gift to be able to share it through music as opposed to words. Throughout the process, I have personally used the music to fall asleep to - and as a sonic space to meditate and contemplate my journey. My hope is that others; healthy, ill or next of kin, will be able to use The Fifty Eleven Project in that same way.
- Kasper Bjørke
Album Reviews
#5 on “The Guardian´s Top 10 Best Contemporary Albums of 2018”
John Lewis (The Guardian)
“A shimmering, nocturnal masterpiece”
Wyndham Wallace (Music Week)
Part of “XLR8R´s Best of 2018”
“Sonically, it´s dreamlike, darkly beautiful but ultimately empowering”
XLR8R
“Beautiful, incredibly tranquil…”
Robin Murray (Clash Magazine)
“Stands as one of this years finest ambient releases”
The Ransom Note
“Sombre but never melancholy, ambient in tone but possessed with a gentle power, the likes of “Paramount” and “Neurons” sketch lines between the modern chamber music of Ólafur Arnalds and the collapsed-star ambience of early Tangerine Dream”
Louis Pattison (Uncut)
“One of 2018´s most ambitious and moving ambient records”
Self Centered
“A feeling of intelligent tranquility”
A Closer Listen
“...it rises head and shoulders above its contemporaries... the emotions and musical colours here are complex and unusual. For all its seriousness and darkness, this is entirely pleasurable”
Joe Muggs (Mixmag)
“As The Fifty Eleven Project reaches the salvific end of Bjørke’s story so beautiful has been the experience that your own burdens evaporate”
Paul Clarke (DJ Mag)
Part of i-D Magazine´s “8 records you should´ve listened to this year but propably didn´t”
“A lot of love was funnelled into this one”
Frankie Dunn (i-D)
“Meditations on mortality that will undo fans of Frahm/Richter et al”
Tony Naylor
“An epic yet very intimate musical document that works impressively well on an emotional and musical level. It´s a musical experience you should not miss at all ”
Normal Fleischer (Nothing But Hope And Passion)
#4 Top 10 Albums 2018
Masa (KEXP)
“...contains moments so exquisite they almost take your breath away... the whole album is divine... and LP to cherish and to love”
John Bittles (Titel Kulturmagazin)