Aarhus' Venues Don't Care About Being Unique

Deadpan Interference at Radar - Aarhus Psych Fest 2015

Although Aarhus is Denmark’s second biggest city, you still wouldn’t expect bands like Garbage and Kurt Vile to consistently pass through a cute little place with a population of 320, 000. Yet these bands do play there, and pretty often—probably because Aarhus’ reputation for quality venues exceeds the limitations of its size. We decided to learn more by talking to some of the people behind the city’s most renowned venues—Radar, VoxHall/Atlas and Train.

In a way, it makes sense the venues in Aarhus would stand out in quality. After all, they’re tasked with the job of following up on the city’s pretty legit musical legacy. “Talk to the older generation in Denmark and they will tell you that all the top Danish musicians in the 70s/80s came from Aarhus,” says Mads Laier Sørensen, Communications Manager for Radar. Anne Linnet, Kliché, TV-2 and Michael Learns to Rock are a few of the many Aarhus natives who achieved both national and international fame in the 1980s. Sørensen adds, “Of course, a lot of stuff has happened since then—but right now, especially in the last two or three years, Aarhus’ bands have been doing really well. Aarhus has had time and space to grow, which has enabled music lovers to voluntarily organise small, independent concerts.”

Atlas

That DIY, volunteer vibe is embodied by Radar—one of the city’s smaller venues committed to providing a platform for alternative and experimental musicians to freely do their thing. “We try to take artists from these small, volunteer-run gigs and give them a stage here at Radar. There had been a bit of a vacuum in the music scene here recently, so I think people started to make music themselves. Lots of new local punk bands started playing these ‘D.I.Y’ gigs, which gained a lot of traction from the audience. Other types of bands grew out of this movement and, despite not being confined to the punk genre, they kept the mentality of these small punk gigs.”

Although Radar is a hotbed for that impulsive, DIY spirit in Aarhus, it’s sadly one of the only ones. Other than that, Aarhus has a lot of venues – albeit solid ones – that don’t care all that much about being unique. Some don’t think that’s a bad thing. “I think that any city, in any country, has its own cultural identity and strives to produce its own cultural output of significance,” explains Kenneth Kristensen, the booker for Atlas. “At Atlas, we book any genre you can think of. So although I don’t think Aarhus’ music scene is ‘unique’ in any way, it’s of high quality, which is more important than being unique.”

Nils Gröndahl​ at Radar - Aarhus Psych Fest 2015

Perhaps one could criticize these venues for failing to define themselves and their visions more precisely—but that wouldn’t be all that fair. After all, Aarhus is a small city—and therefore a small fish in the big pond of the competitive music industry. For that very reason, Train – another large venue in Aarhus – also sticks to the all-encompassing approach for showcasing music. “It’s hard to get larger International acts to play in Aarhus. Denmark is a small country and comparatively, it’s not that far to commute to Copenhagen for a concert—so most bands prefer to play in the capital because of the attention they get there,” says Train booker Ib Valentin.

The other thing to consider for venues like Train, Radar and VoxHall is the Catch 22 of existing on state subsidies. The positive? Obviously, these venues actually get the funding to experiment, develop and try new things. For example, VoxHall was able to open its sister venue Atlas and Radar relocated from its original 1970s home in 2012. “We obviously miss the ‘sketchiness’ of the old Radar space,” says Sørensen. “But the sound in the new venue is just so much better. We also have more space to try new things, like moving our stage around to suit each show. We definitely rethink traditional ways of doing things.”
Yet the negative? State funding comes with nitpicky rules and guidelines venues have to adhere to—rules and guidelines that change per type of grant and per source of funding. Even if those guidelines aren't outrageous, they still structure these venues' priorities and therefore influence the ambitions venues can have in the first place. It isn't difficult to imagine, then, that it can be challenging for venues to distinguish themselves from each other when they're all operating under the same sets of rules.

Train

However, perhaps the question of individualism doesn’t even matter in Aarhus’ music community. After all, Aarhus is a small city. If anything, the communities in cities like that are more tight knit than they are competitive. “Across the city, we have a willingness to help each other - promoters, venues, musicians, producers, labels, record stores and everything in between. There is a mind-set that we’re all a part of a bigger eco-system,” explains Kristiansen. “We all need to make an effort - not for our own sake, but for the sake of all of us in Aarhus’ music community.”

That effort seems to be working for Aarhus’ venues for now. However, camaraderie above vision only gets you so far. Let’s hope that Aarhus’ focus on quality sound leaves room for quality uniqueness in its music, too.