Hess Is More

Limited Edition (200) 180g Vinyl LP in Baby Pink. After several orchestral and experimental adventures, Hess Is More is once again back to where it started, as Mikkel Hess’ (more or less) solo venture through the borderlands of pop music. Gone are the sprawling ensemble works. The sound of CÆKE is minimalist, spacious and mellow.

Piano, drum machines and vintage synths assemble a curious DIY space for Hess’ voice to wander… pensive and unhurried, with strange, eccentric poetry. In honest Hess-ian fashion, the maturity of the sound is offset by a tendency for the childish, the curious… a subversive lightheartedness, which traces back to Hess’ early works.

Take the chorus to ‘I Love My Life… Again and Again’, laid above an innocuous drum machine beat: “I Love My Life/I Fuck My Wife/Again and Again”. The ironies and pleasantries flow into a larger mood of mellow existentialism, with which Hess greets the oncoming seriousness of life as a father. Much has happened since Hess’ began the project in the early 00’s.

CÆKE represents a return to the basics, but the basics have changed. Life has changed. The world has changed. CÆKE is Hess finding the melody of a new life. One that makes room for both seriousness and carefreeness, the introspective and the outward, the living room and the dancefloor. Released April 23, 2024