Internazionale

Internazionale is one of the many aliases of Mikkel Valentin Dunkerley, a Copenhagen-based artist, who created a unique sonic world through his own music and the curation of the Janushoved label. Mikkel’s sound has always stood out due to its crystalline ambience, beautiful transparency and decadent undertones. Bursting with juvenile grandeur, the uncontrolled and chaotic beauty of youth and melancholia, it wraps these intense emotions in uneasy lo-fi ambient textures, shimmering synth layers, and monotone beats – as in the case of his other project Rosen & Spyddet. The latter focuses on more danceable rhythmic patterns coated with distorted and rough melodics. Internazionale’s “What was Sown into History” was one of the greatest, most overlooked ambient gems, a piece of simplicity, clarity, and floating minimalism, while Rosen & Spyddet’s “Fortuna” released on Posh Isolation sounds like a beautifully mesmerizing soundtrack for first dates and kisses filled with pleasant jitters and hazy thrills.

In the records

STM 188 is a thick, disorienting musical narrative with many unexpected detours. It reveals the multilayered influences that helped shape Mikkel’s sound. The inclusion of artists as diverse as French composer Gabriel Fauré or British anthemic trance darlings Binary Finary, serves to conjoin rival sonic aesthetics and guide us in and out of unexpected environments. Coming from the melancholia-infused gritty lo-fi soundscapes of Danish colleague Hvide Sejl (one of many Loke Rahbek’s projects) or the silk-wrapped neon-techno of Angeles (Soho Rezanejad’s alter-ego) you can turn up at a thumping acid party with the Inhalants or bump into the classy Scandinavian new wave/pop of Dodo and the Dodos. However varied the picks might be, this string of urban post-euphoric sadness travels throughout the majority of the mix – from major highs to the more contemplative after-moments. Even the louder rhythmic parts seem to surface like brief flashes of memories of post-rave wanderings through murky noir cityscapes. The static motion, shadowy tones, and hazy layers of Lourdes Castro’s painting “Sombra Projectada de Milvia Maglione” echo the selection fairly well.