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‘Rethink it all!’ Why is one Danish school producing nearly every cool alt-pop star?

Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory finds common ground between Ella Fitzgerald and Charli xcx – and its free-thinking alumni are thriving. We go on a tour to see what’s in the water there (aside from shipwrecks)

De Casier and Molina, from Chile, are two of many noteworthy young musicians to emerge from the RMC in recent years: the school has produced so many brilliant, predominantly female stars, playing a very particular kind of emotionally rich, leftfield electronic pop, that it’s become an engine room for some of Europe’s most exciting music. They share some stylistic leanings – a predilection for lower-case song titles and record sleeves adorned with blurry photographs and zoomed-in portraits – but there’s also something less tangible binding them together: melodies like lullabies from some half-remembered dream that stick in your head without shouting for attention. And Spotify recently published Cph+, a playlist featuring a host of burgeoning RMC talent, numerous other Copenhagen artists and, curiously, non-Danish acts such as Oklou (France), Milan W (Belgium) and Chanel Beads (US), suggesting the emergence of a scene and style unbound by geography.

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