From the booklet notes:
"The music of the group springs up from various sources such as graphic scores, pictures, a text, or simply a title; or the music is based on free improvisation, having no musical material arranged on beforehand, but it might follow a kind of dramaturgic plan. Madam Press works in a chamber musical setting and endeavours to explore the specific sound potential that this instrumentation offers. All five musicians are familiar with new music and refer spontaneously to the sounds and styles of new music. The group does not have a spiritual point of departure, as e.g. Karlheinz Stockhausen had for the intuitive works he wrote in the 60's, but simply works along the ideas that emerge, being an ensemble that has developed the ability to act together in a common musical frame. The composer Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen has been a major inspiration to the development of the group."
See more about the group here!
Read the review by Joergen Lekfeldt from Dansk Musiktidsskrift online (in Danish!) here!
Here is a review by Federicio Marongiu from www.musicextreme.com, Issue 37, October 2005:
Madam Press is a quintet from Denmark created by five talented women whose
main goal is to experiment within coherent musical structures. In fact, the
first thing that struck me when comparing Madam Press´ music with other
improvisational outfits was the emphasis that some of the musical pieces
here have in achieving melodies and twisting them beyond recognition. That
is, while other improvisational musicians try to extract sounds from their
instruments this woment try to shape this sounds into some strange melodies
thata re essential in their music. There is a lot of spontaneity here and
that becomes evident from the first minute to the lst one of this recording.
I have been gratefully surprised by the amazing voice that Nina Björk
Eliasson has, using it like another instrument and adding sort of an
ethnical feeling to the improvisations. Mette Stig Nielsen is an expert in
adding dissonances to the music playing chords that will surely struck your
ears but tht when combined with the other instruments constitute a really
coherent musical form. And a lot of the better things here are created with
the good interaction between the five musicians (or four in the case of the
quartets) where they achieve the greatest levels of inspiration and show how
you can add rhythmic phrases, melodies and sounds creating amazing musical
compositions full of coherence and virtuosism.
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