oplen is an electronic music project by Swedish Henrik Sunbring, also a member of the post-kraut duo Domus. The work of oplen took off in 2001 when Henrik bought his first sampler and became obsessed with manipulating sounds and building rhythmic structures combined with layers of melancholic sounds and themes. After two years of audio engineering studies in the north of Sweden just by the arctic circle, he started to engineer for various bands. At this point, he also joined the electro post-punk band Agent Side Grinder for 10 years. During this period, the band recorded 5 albums and played over 100 gigs all over Europe.
Combining work as a mixing engineer and touring with ASG influenced Henriks way of understanding music. Listening to, and thinking of, the electronic worlds of sounds became as natural as using his own language. Between 2005 and 2012 oplen released half-a-dozen of EP:s and albums for streaming/netlabels. oplen also appeared on some compilation releases by labels like Enfant Terrible, Equaliteq, Acrylik, depth and construction and Zerinnerung. After some years of silence, 2020 was the year when oplen started to make new sounds again.
O-P-L-E-N is a mixtape of oplen’s songs O, P, L, E, N. The album also features a long ambient track called 0d13n as B-side. Each song has a specific musical and/or technical idea as a starting point, but were recorded and composed during improvision. The sound emerges from a combination of analog synthesizer rhythms, field recordings, processed guitars and Moog melodies. This forms a unique mix of dark ambient, IDM, postrock and experimental 70’s psychedelic music.
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