The scary edge

The words belong to Peter Schneidermann, the guitarist and co-founder of Sort Sol. He has also said about the same Steen Joergensen: "He was horribly out of tune, but that didn't matter. For he was a singer. You could see it."
 
Explosion and control
Peter Schneidermann, better known as "Peter Peter" is probably right. The Steen Joergensen of 1977, the year Sort Sol started as a punk band named SODS, is the same Steen Joergensen who performed ten years later in DR's televised concert from the old Carlton porn cinema in Vesterbro. And Joergensen of the TV concert is the very epitome of a singer: As a large cat he wanders up and down the stage scaffolding - at once explosive and controlled. As if he could explode any minute. And the tune? He is probably more in tune than he was ten years before. But there is this edge. It's not out of tune, but nearly. We have the impression that Steen Joergensen is on the edge of something dangerous. Perhaps on the edge of the Sort Sol (Black Sun), a concept that has symbolised evil from ancient times. And he has the ability to grip us - the audience - along with him.

Next to him, guitarists Peter Peter and Lars Top-Galia are "The Evil Twins". Dressed identically, they back the big city crooner Joergensen with pulsating intensity. At the same time they tell their own jagged guitar stories.

Discharges of energy
The 1987 album Everything That Rises ... Must Converge was the artistic breakthrough for Sort Sol. To this very day, the album is unrivalled in Danish rock history. In the period around their breakthrough, the group's concerts were some of the most forceful and intense rock music ever performed by a Danish band.
 
They are stories told with such violent discharges of energy that, at the same time, the musicians dissolve and create the stage in front of our eyes. They pull us along and pull us down. From there the musicians can entice us into the seduction of the stage.

As only a real singer, a real rock band, with a real stage show can do.

Lone Nyhuus is a former dancer and choreographer. As a freelance journalist she works for the DR P2 radio programme Teatermagasinet (The Theatre Magazine).