Mute State is on the streaming services, find yours here: https://songwhip.com/mutestate
The Mute State Philosophy and Background
The Sound of Tomorrow … A note is struck on a guitar. The note is captured by an electronic reverb device that can make even the Pantheon in Rome pale in comparison. An infinite cloud of sound takes shape. A few quick and skillful knob turns give the next note from the guitar a new character. A character that interacts with the first, creating synergy. A complex and mood-laden synergy. A feeling of warmth settles in the listener. A warmth that almost calls to be broken. The break is introduced with another electronic device, this time a device that can distort sound. The distortion is controlled and gradually introduced, leading to a controlled decay. An image forms. A sound image with a futuristic touch. It’s easy to imagine a cityscape reminiscent of Blade Runner. A recording of human voices is activated and processed with other electronic devices. Knobs are turned, and the voices become bright one moment and dark the next, eventually being caught by an echo machine that, again through skillful knob turns, makes the echo shift between characters. A brief, sharp, and edgy echo, or a warmer, unconventional tape echo, as they existed in the early days of sound technology. The “soundsum” is now dialed in on sound unit number eight out of what seems like at least a hundred. This time, it’s a machine that, in its complex simplicity, simply turns the volume up and down. The changing volume gives a faint sense of rhythmic pulse, a rhythmic pulse that gradually and smoothly intensifies until it becomes a full-fledged rhythm. The rhythm is recorded on the spot and repeats monotonously, stubbornly, and insistently.
The scenario unfolds live in front of an audience, an audience that drifts away in their dreams and allows themselves to be moved, regardless of their usual musical tastes, as the music speaks more to the world of film and imagination than the traditionally musical one.
Painting with Sound
The musician behind it all goes by the name Mute State, a state of silence, a state that, in the musician’s own words, celebrates presence, the place of presence where one can simply exist without wanting anything specific but is allowed to be absorbed in the moment, as the person one is while being it. For the musician, there is a kinship with the working process of abstract visual artists, where layers of colors are applied and removed. A working process where forms arise, are pursued, and transform into new forms with and without recognition. It’s an immediate painting of sound that unfolds as quickly as it is painted.
From Jazz to Abstract Lyricism
Mute State, whose real name is Tao Højgaard, has a background in jazz and found his way into electronic music through a film assignment. The director requested a particular auditory atmosphere without a specific starting or ending point. The task was solved as a constantly transforming soundscape and led Tao Højgaard to discover an entirely new musical value system. A value system where the obvious impressive skill that dominates jazz is set aside for emotional immersion, where the artist and the recipient are allowed to be equal and follow each other into an auditory universe.