With 600,000 monthly listeners, Bremer/McCoy have, against all odds, created their own subdued cosmos in a noisy era. Appropriately, Kosmos is the title of the duo's sixth album. Here, they aim to convey a worldview rooted in deep connectedness and a sense of freedom. The raw material includes tracks that have been simmering for 15 years, alongside pieces that emerged in an intense moment within 15 minutes.
“Humans have always played music. We’ve sat around fires and sung. We’ve danced. When we play together or listen together, we communicate wordlessly. And right now, it’s important to remember to communicate, as many feel we are in tough times. I believe everyone feels a fundamental joy and peace when experiencing something beautiful being created,” says Morten McCoy.
Kosmos is a statement without exclamation marks or large fonts. It’s the attempt of two Danish musicians to capture the world they stand for—and wish to share with others. The album represents a worldview, and in Bremer/McCoy’s cosmos, we can meet each other without words.
At the group’s concerts, this intimate and immediate atmosphere arises. The starting point for Kosmos was to capture the emotions from their concerts on record. Hence, they approached the initial studio session as if they were performing a concert and began improvising. Their improvisation style is unique: they don’t improvise solos but songs. They don’t riff aimlessly but delve into a story. They don’t know what story they’ll tell when they start, but they discover it together.
They share a common background and have known each other since Ryvangen Lilleskole. Yet, they are two men living very different lives today—Morten McCoy lives in a commune on a farm with his wife and children, while Jonathan Bremer leads a fast-paced city life. In music, however, they always find each other because they can be fully present together.
This approach is clearer on this album than any of their previous ones. For instance, the first single “Higher Road” was made in a single take, with both instruments and effects applied in the moment. The tracks contain themes of meditation, prayer, gratitude, and a quiet optimism on behalf of all of us. A song like the single “Alting løser sig” (“Everything Will Work Out”) is so named because they had a loose idea and began playing to see what would happen. Out came a song fitting for the duo’s cosmos, dealing with the notion that fear is a poor driving force; instead, one should try to trust that things will be okay. “Hvor du er” (“Where You Are”) came about because they were in the studio with Hans Philip long ago, where he put random words together as they played. Among them was “indtil, hvor du er” (“until, where you are”), which became the starting point for a separate Bremer/McCoy track. Ideas and melody fragments can need “to marinate for 10 years,” as Jonathan Bremer puts it. “Bøn” (“Prayer”) comes from that pool. It is lifted from a theme the duo often played live but never managed to weave into an album. But when Jonathan Bremer played a bass ostinato, everything fell into place. As things tend to do when Bremer/McCoy put themselves and their listeners in a trance-like state.
Bremer/McCoy will follow up “Kosmos” with a series of concerts in the country’s largest cities this fall. The tour concludes with three concerts in the Conservatory Concert Hall in Copenhagen. In between, there is also a Scandinavian tour, where the duo will visit both Sweden and Norway. In the spring 2025, they will make their first tour outside of Scandinavia, taking their own soundsystem on the road through Northern Europe.
Facts – Bremer/McCoy
- The duo was formed in 2012 by two former schoolmates, bassist Jonathan Bremer and pianist Morten McCoy.
- Both members have been nominated for the critic award Steppeulven, including in the categories “Musician of the Year” and “Composer of the Year” – Jonathan Bremer won the former.
- Kosmos will be their sixth studio album.
- Bremer/McCoy’s previous album Natten (2021) received several positive reviews – including a beautiful feature in Flood Magazine, an in-depth review on Popmatters, and a glowing review by the SF Chronicle, which wrote, “The celestial quality of these songs is a mighty salve.”
- Natten also received 4/6 stars in the Danish magazine Politiken and 5/6 in the Danish magazine Gaffa—and the Taz (DE) said, “you can get lost in these songs and still never be lost.”
- Bremer/McCoy’s 2019 album Utopia pulled in an array of positive reviews, including 7/10 from Popmatters, 6/6 from Gaffa, and 5/6 from Soundvenue.
- Utopia (2019) gained them a cult following in the U.S. and a roster of notable fans, including Nils Frahm and Gilles Peterson, who called their music “stunning.”
- They have around 600,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, and their latest album Natten has streamed over 6.4 million times in total.
- Internationally, Bremer/McCoy is released on the prestigious label Luaka Bop, founded by David Byrne.
