You feel Valbyparken before you properly hear it. The dry grass, the late-summer heat and the fine dust rising from the paths, slowly finding its way into shoes, skin and throat. Syd for Solen is a festival that looks broad on paper, yet still has a distinct musical temperature. There is room here for Danish-language melancholy, new rap, experimental R&B and a reunion many have been waiting nearly a decade for. Saturday gave us five very different experiences — from the soft opening to the big nostalgic finale.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
Brimheim – a soft landing
Brimheim is our first concert and a soft landing into the festival day. Behind the artist name stands Danish-Faroese Helena Heinesen Rebensdorff, who moves between alternative pop, rock and something darker that keeps threatening to break through the surface.
She doesn’t need to shout Valbyparken awake. Instead, the music is allowed to slowly spread across the grounds. One moment it is restrained and almost fragile; the next it is carried by guitars and a vocal that can easily fill more space than she initially lets on.
Brimheim also takes a chance on new, as yet unreleased material. That can be a risky move at a festival where many people would rather recognise the song within the first few seconds. Here, it feels more like a glimpse of something that is still growing.
It isn’t the loudest concert of the day. But it is a concert with calm, direction and an artist who seems completely certain about the space she wants to create.
★★★★★☆
5 out of 6 stars
Hans Philip – melancholy with hips
By now, Hans Philip hardly needs any major introduction to a Danish festival crowd. He draws in people who know exactly what they’re here for: the soft vocal, the understated R&B and lyrics circling closeness, doubt and all the things that rarely become simpler just because you think them through.
He opens with newer material from Honey, where his familiar sound is joined by electronic elements, strings and more playful production. Later, older songs from Forevigt also make their way into the set, and the audience is immediately with him.
Hans Philip moves with a particular kind of effortless charm. Small dance steps, loose shoulders and movements that never look choreographed, but rather like someone who has forgotten that several thousand people are watching. It suits the music. He fills the stage without making a fuss about it.
A few metres behind us stands his wife. She sings along, takes photos and follows the concert from the audience side. It adds something special to the experience to see someone who must know the songs from a completely different place experience them together with the rest of the crowd.
The concert is polished and elegant, but also very comfortable. Hans Philip knows exactly what he can do, and the audience knows exactly what they’re getting. It is pleasant, beautiful and charming — without quite tipping into the unforgettable.
★★★★☆☆
4 out of 6 stars
Faza – all the way to the small stage
We leave Hans Philip in time to catch the final part of Faza at De Første Stråler. It is the festival’s smallest stage, and the contrast is obvious at once. There are fewer people, shorter distances and no battle to get all the way to the front.
Faza is from Odense and moves between hip-hop, R&B and pop rap. If we were to place him in the current Danish rap landscape, he sits somewhere between Artigeardit, D1MA and ICEKIID — but with his own more effortless and festive energy.
With a bandana tied around his head and sunglasses on, he greets the audience as if there are far more of us than there actually are. He sends a tribute to Odense, speaks to the singles and to those who came with their woman, and manages to turn the small stage into an advantage.
It is precisely the closeness that carries the concert. Faza looks out at the audience and actively works to bring everyone along. A direct contact emerges that can be hard to create on a bigger stage, and it feels like a small reward for those who made it here.
Musically, he is still in the process of defining his own space, but as a festival artist he has understood something crucial: you don’t wait for the audience to come to you. You give something of yourself.
★★★★☆☆
4 out of 6 stars
Blood Orange – it doesn’t get much closer than this
By the time Blood Orange comes on, the dust has settled well under our fingernails, and this is the most tightly packed concert of the day so far.
Blood Orange is Dev Hynes’ musical project and a universe where R&B, soul, electronic music and art pop flow together. It is his first concert in Denmark in seven years, and the interest is palpable long before the first note.
On stage there are musicians, instruments and layered production. The songs often demand more attention than singalongs, and many of their qualities lie in the layers and details. Even so, the space is packed. The audience stands close enough that the concert is experienced through other people’s shoulders, hair and raised phones. Some try to move further forward. Others have accepted their position and stand almost still.
The crowd says something about how big a name Dev Hynes has become without ever feeling like a conventional pop star. But the physical distance affects the experience.
The strongest moments come when Hynes steps more clearly forward and lets the voice and the person come before the production. That is when the concert opens up, and you understand why so many people have pushed together in front of the stage.
★★★★☆☆
4 out of 6 stars
The xx – nostalgia without ageing
The xx are back. After eight years away from the stage and nine years since their last Danish appearance, Romy Madley Croft, Oliver Sim and Jamie xx are once again standing together on a stage in Denmark.
You can feel it in the crowd. Even before the concert begins, expectation hangs over the grounds like an extra layer. For many, The xx are inseparable from the late 2000s and early 2010s — from youth, night-time excursions and relationships that may have made more sense through music than through conversation.
So when “Crystalised” and “Islands” hit the grounds, it is more than recognition. It is collective memory.
Happily, The xx do not try to recreate the past. The songs begin in their familiar minimalist universe, with air between the notes, Oliver Sim’s and Romy’s vocals facing each other, and guitar figures that can still make a large festival crowd lean in and listen.
Slowly, the concert moves in a more physical direction. Jamie xx remains the most anonymous person on stage, but his imprint grows throughout the set. The bass gets heavier, the productions more club-oriented, and the trio’s quiet melancholy is gradually joined by pulsing rhythms.
The concert is the trio’s last this summer. They look like three people who have once again found the joy of standing in the same musical room.
★★★★★☆
5 out of 6 stars
When The xx leave the stage, the festival is not quite over. But our day is. We walk through Valbyparken with sore feet, dust everywhere and that particular festival fatigue that feels like both exhaustion and satisfaction. The day began with Brimheim’s controlled calm and ended in The xx’s shared nostalgia. Along the way we got Danish melancholy, rap up close, layered R&B and British nostalgia.
We leave the grounds with a dust cough that will take a few days to shake off.
En stjerne
To stjerner
Tre stjerner
Fire stjerner
Fem stjerner
Seks stjerner
