IKI

IKI began in 2009 in the dark. A circle of vocal students at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen started meeting once a week with no plan, just the question of what might happen when singers stepped outside their known roles. Their first concert took place in complete darkness in the conservatory's concert hall. Something about that felt right. They never stopped exploring.

Over time, nine voices became five: Anna Mose, Randi Pontoppidan, Kamilla Kovacs, Guro Tveitnes and Johanna Sulkunen. Together they have shaped a sound that is hard to place and easy to feel. IKI perform acoustically and with live electronics, using machines and pedals to stretch and reshape their voices in real time. Their music moves from trance-like sonic textures to simmering avant-garde beats and collages, always built in the moment, always in close dialogue with the room and the people in it. In 2011, their debut album won the Danish Music Award for Jazz Vocal Album of the Year. Their third album Oracle (2018), produced by Mike Sheridan, received two further nominations. Their 2023 EP Masses featured Marilyn Mazur and Maria Faust, and grew out of a collaboration with Thorvaldsens Museum at Copenhagen Jazz Festival. Body, their fifth album, is out now on TILA. Self-produced and built entirely from voices, it is their most personal work to date. Every sound on the record comes from the human voice, moving fluidly between acoustic and electronic expression. The album is conceived as one continuous, cyclical piece with no fixed beginning or end. Songs called Walk, Run, Dance and Float trace the pulse of the body in different physical states. A recurring motif called Circuit returns throughout, eventually revealing a single question: are you gone when your body is not breathing?

IKI have toured extensively across Europe, including Italy, and performed at Roskilde Festival, TEDx Copenhagen, SPOT Festival (2012, 2016, 2018) and Jazz Ahead 2018. They have collaborated with Blixa Bargeld, Matthew Herbert, Marilyn Mazur, Maria Faust, Henrik Vibskov, Hotel Pro Forma and Damselfrau, among others. They are currently performing as part of Hotel Pro Forma's Reumert Award-winning production Flammenwerfer, which has toured Denmark, Sweden and Italy through 2024, 2025 and 2026. Their ongoing school concert programme has brought experimental vocal music into Danish schools since 2020.

IKI are: Anna Mose (DK), Randi Pontoppidan (DK), Kamilla Kovacs (DK/HU), Guro Tveitnes (NO), Johanna Sulkunen (FI).

“Built entirely from voices, and proudly so, Body refuses the cosmetic surgery of heavy processing in favor of exposed skin: cracks, saliva, friction, pulse. If most contemporary vocal music tries to sound superhuman, IKI insist on sounding unmistakably human.”

“Electroacoustic vocal acrobatics at the limit, tearing down the boundaries of language.”

“It sounds as if someone has placed a microphone directly inside the nervous system's electrical impulses.”

“Abstract ideas and highly individual idiosyncrasies merge into a common voice in which nothing feels abstract or aloof.”

“With their impressive voices, the women of IKI conjure a beauty that is as magical as it is surreal.”

“An album touched by grace. Simply magnificent, what a blow.”