You can say a lot about youth, but at least you can't say that we dare not feel anything. It felt almost inappropriate at all to reach for his beer when Rumle Kærså stood on stage and asked 1,500 people to close their eyes. We weren't there to drink. We were there to get hit.
One star
Two stars
Three stars
Fours stars
Five stars
Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
Big Vega wasn't blacked out. It was off. As if someone had pulled the plug on reality and put us into something else -- a space of bark, hope and adolescent hearts thumping to the beat of the drums. And when Rumble, with his boy voice — which we who have been with for a long time, can still hear the blade 'Wonderwall' in from Voice Junior — said that we were bound together by roots, well, it didn't sound like a metaphor. It sounded like an age-old truth we had forgotten.
There's something almost naive about Aphaca. But that's the kind of naivety you get chills from. The kind of courage it takes to believe in community singing and communion in an age when algorithms have otherwise taught us to scroll without feeling anything.
Musically, they range wildly -- from tearful folk to rave and funk at hop-together tempo. 'Klip clap sandals' might as well have been invented by MGMT at Danish afterschool. And 'Melting Under the Moon' is going to stick in the neck hairs of a generation that has probably laughed at their parents' Coldplay quotes, yet yearns for something that feels real.
There were guitars that screamed like wet dreams from the 80s. There were bass gaits that sat like backbone reflexes. There were moments when Rumble just said one sentence -- “You're looking at me one second...” -- and it felt like a collective admission that we've all been waiting to be seen.
And that's perhaps the most impressive thing: Aphaca can make a hall full of people forget they're at a concert. It feels like a conversation. Or a procession. Or a first crush where you have no idea what to put up with all that intensity.
Their vibe isn't something that can be captured in a review. It has to be experienced. On a bridge in Aarhus. In a courtyard at Christianshavn. Or at Roskilde, where they'll probably end up exploding in communion and confetti.
Aphaca dreams. But they do it loud, dirty and with a surprising confidence. They still seem like a band having fun, but also like someone who has understood that they actually mean something to people. It's not that little.
Let's just put it like this...
Aphaca doesn't sound like the future. They sound like the kind of thing we've forgotten to yearn for. Something that makes noise, but listens. Something that dances, but not for the gallery. A voice, not for one generation, but for all of us who still have something in our hearts that can be opened up.
