Aiming for Enrike - Music for Working Out

Release: January 10th, 2020

Oslo, Norway

This is a love letter. Nothing more, nothing less. A love letter to a frantic and energetic duo comprised of two Norwegians that blend funk, electronic, postpunk, jazz and prog into live performances of looped guitar melodies and infectious drum grooves. Sounds good? It’s better!

I would forgive you for having never heard of “Aiming for Enrike”. After all, it’s a strange name, isn’t it? Well, they’re strange not only in name, but in basically everything else. Tobias Ørnes of former Leprous and current Ihsahn fame and Simen Følstad Nilsen only need two things to craft a soundscape so colorful and eccentric, that you begin to question the ingredients of your breakfast cereals: A guitar and a drum kit.

And with this austere setup comes an interesting proposition: Everything is recorded live, there are no backup tracks, only a ton of loops, a shit ton of effect pedals, and four hands to control the flow of the music. It is this process of creating things on the fly, that imbues their compositions with a liveliness and rawness so incredibly captivating, I cannot help but get sucked into it.

“Music for Working Out” is a weird, yet fascinating symbiosis of dance influences and Aiming for Enrike’s unique fusion of a myriad of other genres. Embellished with crooked melodies, layers upon layers of looped, psychedelic effects and intricate drum patterns, this album is the most effective adderall I’ve yet to try. Due to the nature of loop-based music, and in line with their electronic influences, many tracks, are constructed around ever-escalating drum beats and melodies.

But that is not the reason I adore this music as much as I do. It’s not because of their seamless musical interplay, or the hypnotic atmosphere. And neither is it because of Tobias Ørnes’s masterful groove. It is because I feel alive. Like struck by lightning. Like they stand in front of me, twisting their pedal knobs and improvising drum fills. By how they compose and perform, Aiming for Enrike embody the raw and pure energy I feel when music gets the better of me, when I get goosebumps or almost shed a tear, because the floodgates of serotonin burst open.