Releases
I have released eight full albums and one EP of improvised electronic music.
On this page I have added some background on each of them, along with the three singles I released with Hanne Raffnsøe. There are direct links to the album tracks here, though most of it can also be found on your favorite streaming service.
Before I started using the name SoundOkapi, I released two albums of my own organ compositions under my real name. I also played a big part on Helle Thun's debut album 'Tales from Forgotten Woods', which is included here as well.
Besides what ended up on the major platforms, I have put quite a lot of other material on my
YouTube channel
and
SoundCloud
. There is also a more informal live release on
Pausa a Pausa's Bandcamp page
.
Ataraxia 2
Ataraxia 2 continues the path I started on the first Ataraxia album: minimal, slowly changing music for deep listening. Each of the six 20-minute tracks is built from interlocking loops, recorded live and placed in space with the Neuzeit Quasar.
Best on headphones.
Link to the tracks on SoundCloud:
1:
God of All Nature
2:
Urban Echoes
3:
Breathing
4:
Dots in Motion
5:
Crossings
6:
Mysteries
Along with the album, I also released a small companion book called “The Little Book About Ataraxia 2”. It contains some background on the recording process, the instruments I used, especially the Boss RC-600 looper and the Neuzeit Quasar, and a set of listening exercises for anyone who wants to go a bit deeper into the music.
You can download the book by clicking the image below:
UNMASKED
This album contains all the music I made for the dance performance UNMASKED by the Danish dance company Kompagni47. The piece revolves around the masks we wear in public, with family, with friends, at work, and elsewhere. What happens when we keep them on, and what happens when they come off?
Link to the tracks on SoundCloud:
1:
Mask On
2:
Work Work (and the boss)
3:
You Catch Me
4:
Coming Home Alone
5:
The Mask They Chose for Me
6:
A World of Masks
7:
Monsters
8:
Who's Who?
9:
Lost
10:
Seaweed, Volcanoes
11:
The Voices I Carry
12:
Wait
13:
Rumors
14:
Rumor Kill
15:
Entangle
16:
Untangle
17:
Building Bridges
18:
Mask Off?
Making music for UNMASKED was the first time I composed for a full dance performance, and really the first time I had made music specifically for dance at all. One of the things I learned was how little music you sometimes need when movement is already doing so much on stage. So hearing the album on its own is, in a way, only half the experience, but I still wanted to release it.
About half of the tracks were older pieces, some even released under other names, while the rest were made for UNMASKED.
UNMASKED premiered in May 2025 in Næstved, Denmark.
Three Colors
An EP recorded in 2021 and released in January 2025. Originally, I thought these three improvised tracks would be followed by more pieces in the same vein. That never happened, so after a four-year delay I released them as they were.
Link to the EP on SoundCloud:
Three Colors
Three Colors was recorded using only the Prophet XL from Sequential. While mastering the EP, I regretted selling that instrument enough to start looking for a used replacement right away. I found one, though it turned out to be the smaller sibling, the Prophet X.
Music from a Tiny House
This album came out in April 2024 and is probably the grooviest thing I have done. Microhouse was one of the impulses behind it.
Links to the tracks on YouTube Music:
1:
Cormorant
2:
Goodbye
3:
Grains
4:
Cage
5-6:
Contraption/Orbit
7:
Subway
8:
Ballad
9:
Downtown
10:
Skaters
11:
Sevensevenfour
12:
Barren 1
13:
Barren 2
Even so, I am still working in my usual way here: keeping the material fairly minimal and letting small sound groups rub against each other until something starts to happen.
You can also listen to a version where the individual tracks are crossfaded the way I wanted them to flow, which the mainstream platforms do not really allow. That version is on
SoundCloud
Poetic
Released in May 2023, this album has seven tracks. Five of them grew out of poems by writers from Denmark, Finland, and the US, while the first and last are longer pieces of minimal music.
Links to the tracks on SoundCloud:
1:
Rite of New Beginnings
2:
Strange Blue Woman Dancing
3:
Swans
4:
Great the Silence of my Ardent Heart
5:
It Is As If
6:
So Eclipsed
7:
Rite of New Endings
I have been reading poetry since my teens, and Danish poet Gustaf Munch-Petersen has stayed with me for years. On 'Poetic' I translated one of his poems into English and used it in 'It Is As If'. Gertrude Stein inspired 'So Eclipsed', Eino Leino inspired 'Great the Silence...', and Simon Grotrian inspired 'Swans'.
The poems can be found in the comments on the respective links.
Ataraxia
This album came out in autumn 2022 and consists of four half-hour tracks. I made it for focused listening, either as a kind of listening practice or simply as a way to slow down.
Links to the videos on YouTube:
1:
Ataraxia One
2:
Ataraxia Two
3:
Ataraxia Three
4:
Ataraxia Four
Each piece is built from three loops of different lengths, with percussion, noise, strings, wind sounds, and other material moving against each other. Because the loops are uneven, the relationships keep shifting and the music never lands in quite the same place twice. Most of it stays calm, though 'Ataraxia Three' is a bit wilder.
All sounds on 'Ataraxia' come from the Haken ContinuuMini.
Drones from the Evenfall of Mankind
A very dark album, released in February 2022, just before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Across twelve tracks of different lengths, I tried to give musical shape to a sense of collapse.
Links to the tracks on YouTube Music:
1:
There´s a Last Time for Everything
2:
Trashophone Blues
3:
The Downfall Club
4:
Hills to Islands
5:
Night Vision
6:
Faut Marits Last Gathering in Övdalim
7:
Elegy for Lost Lakes
8:
Dancing Around the Funeral Pyre
9:
Broken Requiem
10:
Sparrows Escaping into Outer Space
11:
I Wish that I Had Only Spoken of It All
12:
The Final Strains
I do not live with depression as such, but war, ecological breakdown, inequality, pandemics, and other signs of human weakness have sometimes left me with real anxiety and grief. This album was one way of putting some of that into sound.
The cover photo was made by art photographer Threin Ottossen.
Bindi
'Bindi' means 'twilight' in Georgian, and I chose it as the title of this highly meditative and minimal album, released under my real name in spring 2021.
Links to the tracks on SoundCloud:
1:
Mtvaris Gundi (Moon Choir)
2:
Puncte și linii (Dots and Lines)
3:
Edena Ilmme (Eden Atmospherics)
4:
Iltahämärä (Evenfall)
5:
Gwylio, Aros (Watching, Waiting)
6:
Dvali af Trjám (A Dormancy of Trees)
I have a soft spot for beautiful words, especially in languages I do not speak. The six titles were given to me by friends and acquaintances from Georgia, Romania, Sápmi, Finland, Wales, and Iceland. Like 'Ataraxia', the music is built from long textures that keep shifting in relation to one another for around half an hour at a time.
As with 'Drones...', the cover photo was kindly donated by my friend, the art photographer Threin Ottossen.
Time Incantations
My first electronic album was released in December 2020 under my real name, before I started using SoundOkapi. It has eight minimalist tracks, all made on the Prophet XL from Sequential.
Links to the tracks on SoundCloud:
1:
November World
2:
Tournemires Hindu Scales
3:
Second Mode Cascades
4:
Katharsis
5:
Slowly Dancing with the Glitch
6:
Late Afternoon
7:
Travelling with the Mirror Carb
8:
Silent Night (minimal version)
There is a fairly direct line from my last large cycle of notated music to this first electronic album. The minimalism and meditative atmosphere of my roughly nine-hour work cycle 'In lumine Domini' moved with me from paper into improvisation. Even some of my older obsessions, like Messiaen's modes and the music by Charles Tournemire, are still there in tracks 2 and 3.
Solnat
The first of the three long singles I made with sound artist Hanne Raffnsøe, released in December 2022.
Link to the single on Spotify:
Solnat
'Solnat' means 'sun night' in Danish, which fits the piece. Hanne's vocal improvisation has something ritual-like and nocturnal in it, and the electronics from both of us move around that atmosphere.
Jonshel
The second of the three singles I made with Hanne Raffnsøe, also released in December 2022.
Link to the single on Spotify:
Jonshel
It begins with a spoken tale improvised by Hanne and grows from something calm into something more otherworldly.
Gør jeg?
The third single I made with Hanne Raffnsøe, released in February 2023.
Link to the single on Spotify:
Gør jeg?
In this minimalist improvisation, Hanne moves through a remarkable stream of consciousness in Danish, Swedish, German, and a little Arabic, with detours into poems by Gustaf Munch-Petersen and Bruno K. Öijer. I provide the backdrop: slow, slightly odd rhythms and solos.
Tales from Forgotten Woods
During a brief easing of the COVID restrictions, I met singer Helle Thun at the Church of Jesus in Copenhagen. That is where we recorded the music for her debut album.
Link to the album on Spotify:
Tales from Forgotten Woods
Working with Helle has been a real turning point for me as an improviser. Her open yet methodical approach to improvisation has influenced a lot of my work since we met in 2018.
On 'Tales from Forgotten Woods', longer improvisations are interrupted by short recitatives where Helle improvises on text taken from the manual for her hard disk recorder.
In lumine Domini
The first ten suites for pipe organ from this large work cycle. The full piece contains 26 suites and lasts about nine hours.
Link to the album on Spotify:
In lumine Domini
'In lumine Domini' was my last major sheet-music project. In 2014 I released my own recording of the first part on Helikon Records under my real name, Flemming Chr. Hansen. It was well received, and other organists have since performed excerpts from the cycle.
Sommerfugledalen/Rids
Long before albums like 'Poetic', I was already bringing poetry into my music, sometimes as sung text, sometimes more as an underlying idea, as in the two organ works 'Sommerfugledalen' ('The Butterfly Valley') and 'Rids' ('Outline').
Link to the album on Spotify:
Sommerfugledalen/Rids
This album was released on Helikon Records in 2011. The two organ works are inspired by the Danish poets Inger Christensen ('Sommerfugledalen') and Gustaf Munch-Petersen ('Rids'). Both pieces are built from short movements that each give just a glimpse of the mood or action in the poem behind them.