The hypnotic video for Syntaks’ “Blue Sunshine” — a gorgeously lumbering standout from the Danish duo’s Ghostly International debut, Ylajali — is an all-to-appropriate analog to the pair’s approach to music-making: a wash of color, fleeting glimpses of half-remembered imagery both heavenly and apocalyptic, and vertiginous shifts in scale superimposed over its creators’ faces. Syntaks’ Jakob Skott directed the clip, and his clear love of its subject matter (his musical collaborator and romantic partner, Anna Cecilia) is apparent throughout.

Syntaks’ music evokes an infinitely expanding landscape of papery beats, sighing voices, and hills of sublime noise. In Syntaks’ world, dreams and reality blur into a melodic haze, and nothing is as it seems.

Copenhagen, Denmark-based Jakob Skott has been making music as Syntaks for years, releasing a handful of solo albums on Darla and Benbecula Records, and collaborating with Jonas Munk (his bandmate in psych/krautrock band Causa Sui) as Limp, on Morr Music. In April of 2006, Skott began making music with Anna Cecilia, first adding her vocals to a track on his 2006 album Awakes, and eventually integrating her as a full-time partner. With the addition of Cecilia, a new era of Syntaks was born, fusing

Skott’s densely textured beats and production with Cecilia’s airy, wordless soprano and intuitive songwriting.

Syntaks take their cues from the ambient experiments of Brian Eno and Popol Vuh, the film scores of Ennio Morricone and John Carpenter, and the tonal depth of ‘90s shoegaze bands and early 4AD records. Each sound—from the tinkling of a piano to the snap of a snare drum—has been electronically treated, conjuring an air of unreality that belies the music’s organic construction. Syntaks’ newest record on Ghostly International, 2009’s Ylajali, is a romantic fever dream, a post-rock paean to the transportative, transformative power of sound. Syntaks wraps the couple up like a shroud, absorbing their identities in the pursuit of a heart-stoppingly beautiful vision.

Syntaks’ Mistral Moon EP is a free taste of the Danish duo’s full-length Ylajali, comprising two tracks of Syntaks’ densely layered ambient pop. Syntaks’ songs are textural epics in miniature, meticulously detailed shoegaze symphonies built from Anna Cecilia’s wordless vocalizations and Jakob Skott’s breathtaking production.

Syntaks’ Mistral Moon EP is a free taste of the Danish duo’s full-length Ylajali, comprising two tracks of Syntaks’ densely layered ambient pop. Syntaks’ songs are textural epics in miniature, meticulously detailed shoegaze symphonies built from Anna Cecilia’s wordless vocalizations and Jakob Skott’s breathtaking production.

Listen:   01-Sudden Dream.mp3
02-Mistral Moon (Illuminated Version).mp3

Over a century ago, Norwegian author Knut Hamsun proposed a new creative ideal, a form of literature that would take the intricacies of the human mind as its main object, effectively describing “the whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow.” One hundred-plus years later, Danish duo (and avid Hamsun devotees) Syntaks have taken up Hamsun’s agenda with single-minded purpose, naming their new album after a character in Hamsun novel Hunger, recording it just blocks from where Hamsun wrote his masterpiece, and taking the author’s ambitious mission statement as their own. The album in question, Syntaks’ luminous Ylajali, crackles with emotion and imagination, giving form to its creators’ vibrant inner lives.

In Ylajali’s beautifully scorched sonic landscape, acres of drones run beneath Anna Cecilia’s wordless sighs; beats crunch like autumn leaves while synthesizers swell, flourish, and disappear. Songs either tramp through hazy forests until they fade into the dark (the Boards of Canada-esque “Love Camp 23”), or stack tone upon tone like translucent building blocks, building to forceful, near-operatic crescendos (the epic “She Moves in Colors”). Syntaks’ Jakob Skott is a drummer by trade, and his percussion—both live and programmed, but always lent an otherworldly sheen—plays the sinister counterpoint to Cecelia’s tender melodies. “The Shape of Things to Come” typifies Syntaks’ dreamlike musical logic, drifting through fields of placid melody until sheets of guitar noise, metallic snares, and choir-like vocals rush in. Once the storm passes, all that’s left is the sun, glinting through the mist.

Hamsun would be proud: Syntaks’ Ylajali is an ambient pop album as dense, emotionally complex, and, ultimately, as mysterious as the human mind; and like any great mystery, Ylajali keeps its audience engrossed until the bittersweet conclusion.

Syntaks’ Jakob Skott created this video for the song “Twentytwohundred” (from his group’s full-length Ylajali), in which the parallels between the Danish artist’s visual and aural sensibilities are on full display. Warm, saturated colors and dreamy, abstract imagery fill the clip with a sense of nostalgic wonder, echoing the music’s romantic mingling of the real and unreal.