Been Thinking Too Much About You
Needed a few days off, my loyal readers! But I’m back. I went to a fascinating concert on Wednesday night, which I’ll write about tomorrow when I have more time.
So I’m going to keep it short today. Trentemøller has been one of my secret favorite musicians for many years now. One of my core memories is my friend Alice and I dancing alone to Trentemøller’s remix of The Knife’s “We Share Our Mother’s Health” at 3:00 a.m. in our shared industrial co-op kitchen. Trentemøller is an exceptional remix artist; unlike many better-known remixers, he is not a big name or selling out giant venues, but his skill is pretty much unparalleled. Several of my favorite remixes of all-time are done by Trentemøller. The first track of his I heard was his remix of Moby’s “Go,” by then already 15 years old, which Moby included on his greatest hits album. Some other very memorable ones include his remixes for the Pet Shop Boys’ “Sodom,” Franz Ferdinand’s “No You Girls,” and Röyksopp’s “What Else Is There?” in addition to the aforementioned The Knife remix.
Trentemøller had a unique approach to becoming an in-demand remix artist: before anyone knew who he was, he made several remixes of his own songs. This is actually how I became a big fan of his. His first studio album, The Last Resort (2006), was excellent, but it was largely a dark-tinged ambient electronica album that evoked walking in nordic woods alone at night. In the seven studio albums and several compilation albums since, the music he has recorded has spanned electronic music, but has always remained true to himself. Trentemøller’s music is darker than most. The vocals tend to be ethereal and breathy, the sounds resonate deep in your core, and the melodies are often discordant.
The twelfth song on The Last Resort is “Moan,” which in its original form is like the rest of the album: a cinematic, evocative instrumental track with a soul-shaking bass line. It hardly stands out among the rest of the album, if at all. The deluxe version of The Last Resort contains a vocal version of “Moan” featuring Danish singer Ane Trolle, which shares much in common with my favorite Scandinavian electronic music, including a beautiful, sultry vocal performance wrapped around expertly crafted, complex music. The vocal version instantly stuck in my memory much greater than the album version did. The last minute-and-ten-seconds of the vocal version changed the instrumentation and the beat up quite a bit, which laid the groundwork for the remix.
Trentemøller released his first compilation album in 2007, The Trentemøller Chronicles, which was a two-disc set: disc one was primarily previously released songs that didn’t make the cut onto The Last Resort, while disc two was the best of Trentemøller’s remixes up to that point, including the remixes of Moby, The Knife, and Röyksopp, as well as one for Robyn’s “Konichiwa Bitches” (which, admittedly, isn’t a favorite).
But, as you’ve figured out by now, Trentemøller also remixed two of his own songs from The Last Resort: “Always Something Better” and “Moan.” The latter is of the vocal version with Ane Trolle. This remix really showed what Trentemøller is capable of in terms of conceptualizing music. Listening to the remix next to the album original is listening to two entirely different songs. But listening to the studio album version, then the vocal version, then the remix, and then the dub reveals a progression of remixes that is gradual and breathtaking.
The main focus of this article, though, is “Moan (Trentemøller Remix).” The song is a journey, through the cleverly melancholic lyrics sung by Ane Trolle, but the remix builds slowly enough over the first four minutes that you’re not quite sure what is even different. At 3:52, the song starts to change. It abandons the repeating musical refrain that has been building up to this point. It adds a new synth, that starts out quiet and in the background. But it adds and adds; by the 4-minute mark, Ane Trolle’s voice is mixed back in, and suddenly the whole song starts anew. He had her re-record some of the vocals, to shift the notes in the direction he wanted to move the song. By 4:15, the remix is fully four-on-the-floor. At 4:49, Trentemøller mixes back in a calypso beat from the original, which by this point in the song sounds absolutely demented. He slowly mixes back in all the original pieces of the studio and vocal versions, as well as the first four minutes of this remix. I would make the argument that the portion of this song from 3:52-5:20 is some of the most inspired, legendary stuff in all of electronic music.
I’ve gotten to see Trentemøller twice: on March 13, 2017, and on February 12, 2025. The show last year was spectacular. The super cute guy who did lighting chatted with us before the show, although as is always the problem with Scandinavians, I couldn’t tell if he was flirting or if he was just very friendly and also so cute that I had wishful thinking. Either way, he invited us to sit in the cordoned off area next to the lighting booth, upstairs at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. It is from that vantage point that I got to record several pieces of Trentemøller’s live version of “Moan (Trentemøller Remix).” I wish I had gotten the whole thing straight through, but you’ll have to settle for the parts I did get. Most notably, because the segments are not sequential, it sounds like multiple songs, but rest assured that all of the videos below are the same song. By the fourth and final video, Trentemøller breaks the song down even more than he did in the remix.
In all, I’m going to post the studio version of “Moan,” the vocal version, the remix, and my personal videos of the live version on 2/12/2025 in San Francisco. The differences between these versions is what sets apart a good artist from a great one.