The EMP Series offers a fresh, exclusively digital perspective on Pade's extraordinary electronic music, featuring numerous works that were previously unavailable or unmentioned. These include 80 reel-to-reel tapes and a wealth of compositions and recordings from her tenure as an employee at DR, which were discovered following her passing in 2016.
On 8 August Dacapo Records is releasing two new albums in the series and in October, the complete series will come together in a beautiful book release.
Svævninger
Among Else Marie Pade’s surviving reel-to-reel tapes, two undated ‘material tapes’ both titled Svævninger (Beatings) were found – that is, tapes containing sonic material that might later be used. Both contain sonic material that explore the phenomenon known as beatings, which occurs when two tones with nearly identical frequencies are played simultaneously. Pade employed this technique in a wide range of works – so many, that it could almost be described as her sonic signature.
EMP 10 presents for the first time the contents of these tapes. The electronic sound material from the tapes also served as the foundation for the collaborative work which Pade created together with Jacob Kirkegaard in 2012, also titles Svævninger. The work represents Pade’s final electronic composition and stands as an example of the inspiration she passed on to a younger generations.
Kirkegaard and Pade's Svævninger consists of six movements all named after cloud formations which underscores how the sonic material can assume many
different forms. Pade and Kirkegaard presented the work together in a concert as part of the Wundergrund Festival. At this point, Pade was living in a care home, and the event marked her final public appearance. With the release of EMP 10, the listener now has the opportunity to hear Pade's original sonic material and the collaborative work from 2012 side by side.
Fairytales and radio plays
EMP 11 documents Else Marie Pade's pioneering work creating electronic soundscapes for fairy tales and radio dramas for children and adults during her time at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR). The work began in 1955, where Pade began collaborating with the singer Aase Ziegler, who worked at the so-called ‘school radio’ at DR and imagined that Pade's electronic music would be well suited to illustrate the fairy tales for children and radio dramas produced by the school radio.
With great inventiveness, Pade introduced electronic sound into a field previously dominated by mechanical effects, bringing fairy tale characters to life. EMP 11 compiles a series of Pade’s soundscapes, including several previously unknown works, shedding light on an overlooked part of her practice and revealing how the experimental work in DR’s studios simultaneously shaped her more well-known compositions.