Jason Dungan / Johan Carøe - Routine Jason Dungan / Johan Carøe

Jason Dungan (aka Blue Lake) and Johan Carøe find beauty in the rhythms and repetitions of domestic life on their collaborative album, Routine.

Copenhagen-based multi-instrumentalists Dungan and Carøe didn’t set out to make an album. Instead, as the title suggests, they found their way there through a process of habitual making and listening, developing an intuitive musical language to reflect the dreamlike meanderings and creative play of life's quiet moments. Routine blends pop-orientated sounds, avant-garde minimalism, folk and new age with the emotive depth of film scores.

Their meeting was not entirely coincidental. Previously in bands such as Squares and Triangles, Dungan has since recorded multiple albums under the Blue Lake moniker, including the lauded Sun Arcs, pursuing his passion for self-built percussion and multi-string instruments. Carøe, meanwhile, is a composer whose film soundtrack work has seen him collaborate with Angelo Badalamenti, Arp and Sofie Birch, at whose Andersabo residency (curated by Dungan) the pair first met, resulting in the highly praised album Repair Techniques, written by Birch and Carøe.

Routine emerged organically over many years against the backdrop of great personal change. As Carøe said goodbye to his father and welcomed his first child, the pair sent each other fragments of melodies and patterns, working up responses when time allowed to assemble a sonic palette that combined acoustic instrumentation including zither, clarinet, cello and saxophone with the textures of tape, drum machine and Yamaha DX7 synthesizer.

Inspired by the vulnerability and DIY ethos of Arthur Russell’s home recordings, the vision of labels like Disques de Crépuscule, and the art-pop experimentation of late-'70s and early-'80s recordings from New York and Japan alike, Dungan and Carøe conjured new forms for their folk, leftfield pop and avant-garde influences from the low-lit living rooms of Copenhagen and rural Sweden.

The music floats with grace and humility, remaining sophisticated yet acutely introverted. Across ten instrumental tracks, from “Clouds” and “Routine 1” through to “Hymn”, “Chords”, “Silence” and “Reunion”, the album evokes the ineffable calm that descends when the light changes and the world turns inwards.

Carøe’s treated cello work provides a distinctive foundation, while Dungan’s zither flourishes reveal more classical influences. On “Reunion”, inspiration from Nico Muhly emerges as organs rise alongside Moogs, culminating in a choral outro from mezzo-soprano Anna Caroline Olesen.

Routine is a deeply reflective debut collaboration, documenting a new-found friendship and opening a window into the most personal of spaces, where the daily practices of music and life exist side by side to wondrous effect.