Who Is Bendik Giske?

Yesterday, the Music Desk posted five songs from it's Top 10 list of albums of 2019 (so far), having already posted the top four from that list earlier this year.  So with nine of the ten albums posted, it brings up the obvious question - who is Bendik Giske, the 10th artist on the list?

Born in Oslo and splitting much of his adolescence between there and Bali, Giske took up the saxophone at the age of 12. Over the years, he began to push the boundaries of what he could accomplish creatively with the instrument. 

“I consider myself a queer performance artist—the queer perspective is always there,” he states. “In gay culture, we have the terms ‘top’ and ‘bottom,’ with ‘bottom’ referencing an act of surrender and trust. This act of surrender gives you a different perspective on how you relate to the world—how you apply yourself and experience things.” 

The album Surrender was recorded at Oslo’s Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum.  To create the pieces, Giske and producer Amund Ulvestad placed tiny microphones all over the saxophonist’s instrument and body, right down to being able to capture his breathing between notes.  We don't have technical notes beyond that, but to our ears it sounds like looped layers of circular breathing, with the sax's key pads providing a kind of percussion.
 
Surrender wasn't included in yesterday's list merely because it's so different from everything else on the list that it either wouldn't have gotten noticed and given the attention that it deserves, or else it would have overshadowed the rest and kept all the rest from being noticed.   Here's the video for the song Adjust: