Trentemøller releases “Swerve” with Sakura. He never once met the singers on his new album

Trentemøller has released Swerve, the second single and the song that opens his new album. The track was recorded with Vienna-based singer Sakura, who was born in Hong Kong. The record itself has no separate title — it is simply trentemøller — and comes out on November 13 on his own label, In My Room.

The artist has put the album up on his page on Bandcamp.

“Swerve” is the first song Trentemøller wrote for the album. And it is a sharp departure from his previous record, Dreamweaver (2024): in place of that dreamy sound comes a wall of guitar noise, with Sakura’s voice cutting through it.

How the album was made

For the first time in his career, there are vocals on every one of the ten tracks. The guests include German-British singer Anika, Jonas Bjerre of the Danish band Mew, Sune Rose Wagner of The Raveonettes, American artist Midwife, New Mexico dream-pop duo Tan Cologne and Danish singer Emma Acs, who now sings in his live band. The first single was Terrified with Jonas Bjerre.

None of the singers ever came to his studio: everything was sent back and forth remotely, and most of the vocals were recorded at home. Trentemøller wrote the songs, played the instruments, and produced and mixed the album himself.

“I knew early on exactly who I wanted singing on these songs, people I deeply respect and could already hear in my music, friends and a few I’d never worked with before. We never met in the studio; everything was exchanged remotely. That suited me perfectly. I’m pretty shy, to be honest, and it gave the vocalists the privacy to really open up,” Trentemøller said.

He describes the sound of the new record as extremes pushed to the limit: the noisy got noisier, the dreamy dreamier, the melodic more melodic still. Anything that did not carry a sense of freedom, wandering, sorrow or love, he ruthlessly threw out.

“I wanted it to be brutal and beautiful at the same time, to almost shock the listener when the guitars and everything kick in during the first bars. Sakura’s vocal fits so well it almost becomes an instrument in itself,” Trentemøller says of “Swerve.”

The tour and who Trentemøller is

In February and March 2027, Trentemøller will take the album around Europe — and play it live in full for the first time, from the first track to the last. The tour kicks off on February 27 at Berlin’s Huxleys Neue Welt, where, two weeks earlier, MONATIK plays a show as part of his European tour. Then come Munich, Paris, two nights at Brussels’ Ancienne Belgique, Luxembourg, Amsterdam’s Paradiso, London and Cologne, with the final leg taking in Oslo, Gothenburg, Stockholm and, on March 20, Copenhagen.

Trentemøller is the Copenhagen producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Anders Trentemøller. He rose to fame in the mid-2000s with minimal techno and his debut album The Last Resort (2006), and has since moved further and further towards dark guitar music played with a live band.

The new album is the eighth in his discography and perhaps his most hands-on yet: no outside producers and no singers in the room. “I’ve just never been much good at being told what to do. I don’t really follow trends or think in algorithms,” he explains.