Lars Næsbye Christensen

Music

"The world's most famous and popular language is music."
- Psy

Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, I have composed music and sound design for bands, musicals, video games and more since the early 1990s. I have played music since the age of 9, mostly piano, but also percussion, lead and backing vocals. I have been in several bands and music projects, from Latin American inspired pop through prog metal and ambient electronica to dubstep. I have also written music for three musicals together with my brother, and some score for an amateur film. Expanding piano to synthesizers was primarily due to extensive exposure to French composer and musician Jean Michel Jarre from my brother and my cousin. Later, I was exposed to jazz fusion, techno, triphop and death metal in my teens. Newer styles like dubstep and electroswing continue to inspire and awaken my curiosity. Inspirational sources are many and varied, but I grew up listening to artists such as Jean Michel Jarre, Vangelis, Andreas Vollenweider, Peter Gabriel and many of the pioneers to merge classical Western orchestral tradition with electronics and 'world music'. Since then, many artists have been added to the list of people whose skills I admire. The nature of the internet allows us all to discover works that would have been hard to access in earlier times. Composers such as Jocelyn Pook, Floex and Shpongle add fresh dimensions to the musical palette.

So here are a few of my audio works. Or rather, the ones I've bothered to put up.

These musical works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For most people, this means: go ahead and download, listen and distribute as you like. There are some limitations to other things you can do with it.

♪ Ouverture

♪ MSP Splash

♪ Aréologie

♪ Suspended in a Sunbeam

♪ Terra Sirenum

♪ Transit of Deimos

Take Us To Your Leader: The Return of Common Sense
Full album, me as then-standin (later full member).

Listen and buy it at iTunes Music Store

Obeah: Copenhagen Massive
Minor guest appearance here, playing a melodica synth patch.

Copenhagen Massive EP Label: Kraken Recordings Catalog#: KRKN 001 Format: Vinyl, 12" Country: Denmark Released: April 16th, 2007

Listen and buy it at iTunes Music Store

Bass Snatchers: Ude Af Drift
I played the eerie grand piano, Rhodes, synth.

Who Shot Jacques Laverne? Volume 1 Label: Jack To Phono Records Catalog#: JTP CD 001 Format: CD Country: UK Released: 2004

Listen and buy it at iTunes Music Store

Bass Snatchers: Ude Af Drift (Edit)

Basically a short edit of the 'album' version.

Who Shot Jacques Laverne? Sampler Label: Jack To Phono Records Catalog#: JTP003 Format: Vinyl, 7" Country: UK Released: 2005

Bass Snatchers: Een Gang Til
I played organ, handclaps, ride cymbal and muttered voices near the end. I also wrote the guitar part (!)

	Folklore & Fairytale EP Label: Jacques Laverne Records Catalog#: JLR 002 Format: Vinyl, 12" Country: Denmark Released: 17 Jan 2002
	Who Shot Jacques Laverne? Volume 2 Label: Jack To Phono Records Catalog#: JTP CD 002 Format: CD Country: UK Released: 2005

Listen and buy at iTunes Music Store

Context : Midnight Stroll

I played the Fender Rhodes solo, credited as Electric Eel (I had a number of Eel aliases back then). I wish the track had been edited more, but I guess that's showbusiness :-)

Nobody Beats The Beats Label: Sonny B Recordings Catalog#: SBRcd001 Format: 2CD Country: Denmark Released: 2002

Rolando Posen: Lo Que Vendra

I played the cheesy 80's FM-keyboard on this remix of Tangoorkestret's cover of Astor Piazzolla's tune by the same name. I remember being ecstatic about getting something out on April.

All That Jazz - the remix project Label: April Records Catalog#: APR028CD Format: CD Country: DK Released: 1998

(me: keyboards, vocals; Simon Lambrecht Finne: guitars, vocals; Sussi Alsing Nielsen: guitars,vocals; Lee: percussion, vocals; John Holm Jacobsen: bass, vocals; Carsten Müller Nielsen: drums, vocals)

(me: vocals, keyboards, programming; Rune Edberg: lyrics, vocals, keyboards, programming)

(me : piano; Rikke Rønne: vocals; Stig Andreasen: bass, Henrik Lund: drums)

The third instalment in Scott's prog series. Never got a job, but came up with some interesting ideas.

(me : keyboards, cymbals; Scott Voloshin: drums, bass and vocals; Søren Reinholdt : guitars, e-bow) More of a lo-fi one-man project with guests, really. After the demise of Beat Frequency, Scott wrote some songs for a three-song demo titled "The Healing Process". The cover was an 8 yr old kid's drawing of his nurse mother wielding a bloody knife in one hand and a bottle of poison in the other. I played keyboards and a cymbal roll on one track for the demo, called "Just Another War", inspired by the movie Saving Private Ryan. 'Pads, anyone?' ;-)

Various members over time:

• 2000F/Frederiqué (percussion, talkbox)
• Dr. Disk (turntables)
• Hunulven Eva (electric and acoustic bass)
• Tim Driver (human beat-box, toasting)
• Ålekongen (keyboards)
• Rasmus
• Zeuthen (electric bass)
• Strøm (electric guitar)
• The Shermann (mixer, talkbox, TB-303)
• Albert Raft (saxophone)
• Mr. Steve Austin (turntables)
• Martin Winthereik (guitars)
• Jakob Lægdsmand (saxophones)
• Niclas Campagnol (drums)
• Laura Toxværd (tenor saxophone)

Bass Snatchers began in 1997 as the second spinoff from Rytmisk Center, and a totally different one it was. Jazz, dubstep, breakcore, lounge-latin...a lovely mess and mashup of contemporary styles. Probably my biggest eye-opener to date.

Beat Frequency (1997-1999)

Original Lineup: drums (Henrik Lund), bass (Martin Larsen), guitar (Søren Reinholdt), keyboards (me), saxophones (Jakob Lægdsmand), vocals (Scott Voloshin).

A spinoff from Rytmisk Center, I joined these guys for a whole lot of jamming and improvisation (Scott must have over 200 tapes with jams). I guess the main influential roots were King Crimson and their 70's and 80's contemporaries. Long compositions, changing meters, lots of aural spectacle etc. We managed to make one somewhat decent but noisy demo CD, titled 'Clean Enough', before we went into classic band problems: ambition differences, technical difficulties, members leaving or getting kicked out and replaced etc.
The demo CD received quite a good review in LineOut, pointing out that we were skilled musicians, but ought to be more audience-friendly... I guess today I agree, but back then I couldn't see it.
I guess the only piece where you hear a lot of me is 'Mobile Phones' - the Fender Rhodes in the improvised intro and ending and the weird distorted synth/sax polyrhythmic duet in the middle. Scott deliberately mixed me very low in the rest of the tracks.
We did get a few gigs, Eigen's Ballroom, Studenterhuset and even Rust at one point.

Lineup: Drums (me), guitar (Lars Kjeldsen), guitar (Mathias Lægdsmand), saxophones (Jakob Lægdsmand)

The obligatory school band, although far from traditional in tone language or instrumentation (no designated bass instrument). The cool thing was that we respected each others taste and let everyone make their compositions without compromise. My first fully arranged composition, "Marshlights", was written for this band. It has still never been performed publicly or recorded... and maybe it's best that way :-)

Lineup: Me, forgotten drummer, bass player, percussionist and guitar player

I have totally forgotten everything about this band, except for the fact that we were a mostly-percussion band and played some Metallica songs....I played steel drums, marimba, keyboards and various percussion instruments.

Space

"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we are" - Carl Sagan

Like many people I have been interested in space from an early age, and consider myself a 'spacehead'. Space is the stuff of our dreams and imagination, it can tie into most professional fields on Earth through pushing the envelope of our knowledge, and it provides spinoffs to everyday life.

My focus is on the possibilities within the European space sector to lead international cooperation in space. The recent proposal by the European Space Agency for an international Moon Village is a great opportunity for this.

To that end I'm looking at some of the open source software used by ESA - currently I'm assisting a bit with Rugged. This ties in with the day job I have developing software to facilitate distribution of geodata, which includes Digital Elevation Models.

Professionally, I'm of course looking for a future as a software developer within the European space sector. I would (almost) die to work on lunar projects, be they robotic or human.

Dev

“Without requirements or design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file." - Louis Srygley

After minoring in Computer Science from the University of Copenhagen, I have worked with software development ever since, primarily object-oriented development of both desktop and web applications.

I am very much a fan of general systems engineering principles applied to software development - trade studies, requirements design, reviews and so on in order to ensure a better product.

You can find me on Github and on LinkedIn.

Contact

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Elements

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