“Fuck Thatcher, fuck neoliberalism.” After these words from the stage, an audience response. “Fuck Thatcher” echoes the approving shout from the darkness.
The performer expressing his views is the Sheffield-based folk-rooted stylist Jim Ghedi. What he’s said has not come out of the blue. There is context. He is introducing “Ah Cud Hew,” a song included on his In the Furrows of Common Place album. He learnt it from Ed Pickford, a County Durham singer and songwriter with a family background in coal mining. The song – “I could hew” – is about the decimation of the coal industry during the Thatcher years and the subsequent decline.
For Ghedi, this still ripples. The impact of the Thatcher years remains tangible. His first song is “What Will Become of England.” Key lines are “Some have money plenty, but still they crave for more. They will not lend a hand to help the starving poor.” After this, Ghedi quips “we all know how shit England is.” (pictured right, Mats Erlandsson at Northern Winter Beat 2026. Jan Max Jessen)
It is intriguing how this commentary seems to chime in Aalborg, Denmark’s most northernmost large city, a municipality which – in common with the rest of Denmark – cannot escape the shadows cast by current geopolitical idiocy: specifically, the incumbent US administration’s designs on Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory. Things do not exist in a vacuum, and Ghedi’s concerns – however they’re reframed – are familiar here.
Nonetheless, this is a live show, a performance, and whatever the contemplation generated the music and stage presence have the most immediate impact. Ghedi has a bird-like countenance, peering out from the stage as if assessing where he could land. He is engaging, funny. On the boards with him are Joe Danks (fiddle), David Grubb (drums) and Neal Heppleston (bass). Folk archetypes are – to a degree – respected. “Ah Cud Hew” is pretty much taken as a solo vocal. But a post-punk power hints at an unlikely kinship with the Sonic Youth of “Death Valley 69.” Towards the set’s end, Grubb lays into his drums with intensifying force, increasing tempo. Pounding them into submission. The final moments find him leaping out from behind his kit, throwing himself across the stage and cannonballing through the audience. A extraordinary conclusion.
Jim Ghedi is playing Huset, one of the three main venues brought into play during Aalborg’s annual Northern Winter Beat festival. The other two are the recently refurbished 1000Fryd – reopened after a period of closure due to noise issues: it is now soundproofed – and the Stundenterhuset, a multi-use facility related to the city’s university. The Stundenterhuset has two stages. Also co-opted are the impressive city centre churches Vor Frelsers Kirke and Budolfi Kirke (the region’s Lutheran cathedral). There are also very intimate performances in the below-street-level Gråbrødrekloster Museet, amongst the remains of the city’s medieval Grey Friars Monastery. A more conventional setting also used is the Utzon Center, designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, the creator of the Sydney Opera House. (pictured left, Sebastian Wolff at Northern Winter Beat 2026. Jan Max Jessen)
The bill assembled over the three days is notable. To illustrate: as well as Ghedi, there are Jenny Hval, Hedvig Mollestad Trio and Motorpsycho, all from Norway. Caspar Brötzmann Massaker, Das Kinn and Faust are from Germany. Duo Ruut are Estonian. Japan’s Green Milk From The Planet Orange are playing, as is Denmark’s own Sebastian Wolff (of the pivotal band Kellermensch). From Sweden are Maria W Horn and Sara Parkman (performing as Funeral Folk) and their countryman Mats Erlandsson. Unconstrained internationalism is alive and well. Exemplifying this are the Berlin-based trio Matching Outfits, whose members are American, British and Swedish.
If internationalism and shared understandings of the world underpin Northern Winter Beat, another leitmotif is unavoidable in 2026. One which requires no analysis. It’s just there. Snow. As if it were pre-planned as part of the programme, it begins snowing on the first evening and tails off overnight after the third. Rain and wind are more usual in Aalborg. As it’s below freezing, it lies. The city is on top of it though. Snow ploughs do their thing at midnight in the shopping streets. (pictured right, Duo Ruut at Northern Winter Beat 2026 Jan Max Jessen)
In this weather, getting to Aalborg can prove tricky. Caspar Brötzmann Massaker cannot make it and, responding to a social media call from four hours earlier, Holly Horsepower from the city of Aarhus to the south step up to play the Stundenterhuset. They turn out to be a hot combo in the Breeders/Pixies bag with leanings towards metal. Faust don’t quite make it. Zappi Diermaier, their drummer and only original member, is in Germany. The band's Uwe Bastiansen and Ilpo Väisänen are here however, so decide to spontaneously play an electro/ambient- slanted set in Faust's place on the Studenterhuset's big stage. Finland’s Väisänen is best known as one half of Pan Sonic – what’s performed amounts to an impromptu Pan Sonic show.
Northern Winter Beat begins in a similar vein at Budolfi Kirke with Sweden’s Mats Erlandsson, whose minimalist electronica evokes the rolling sonic waves of Tangerine Dream circa 1974’s Phaedra. A fitting oceanic vibe as the cathedral is dedicated to the sailor-associated St. Botolph.
Within the somewhat more distressed ecclesiastic setting of the Grey Friars Monastery, Sebastian Wolff stands alongside the remains of the masonry cloister walls with his acoustic guitar, singing songs of sundered relationships and trying to pick one’s self up from the floor after such cleavages. There’s some Rick Rubin-period Johnny Cash in there. Some Mark Lanegan too. In its stone sarcophagus, the skeleton laid out in front of him offers no reaction. (pictured left, Motorpsycho at Northern Winter Beat 2026. Jan Max Jessen)
At Vor Frelsers Kirke, Estonia’s Duo Ruut stand on either side of their specially made two-person kannel (the Estonian zither). Their bell-like voices and the glass-like plucked strings combine in a synesthetic analogue of light reflecting from a waterfall. It’s a lovely counterpoint to the below-freezing conditions outside. They explain – and perhaps there is too much atmosphere- and flow-breaking talk – that many of their songs are about the weather.
Any thoughts of what’s going on outdoors are eradicated by the immersive two-hours and 45-minute set played by Norway's veteran psych-nauts Motorpsycho at the Studenterhuset. With Dungen’s Reine Fiske guesting on guitar, the band ostensibly has unhindered levels of energy to draw from. The three elongated songs before set closer “Gullible's Travails” particularly stand out: “CMC,” “Kill Some Day” and “Stanley (Tonight's the Night).” A form of space rock, this dives into psychedelic extemporisation without straying too far into overt rock or getting flabby. Despite the length of the set, this is – gratifyingly– not a challenge.
What is tough though is Das Kiin at 1000Fryd. With computers, keyboards and what look like modular synths, this solo set starts like a Nine Inch Nails version of the early hit-period Human League’s electropop. Soon, the rhythms take over – they are, literally, a gut punch. On the same stage, Green Milk From The Planet Orange deal in a beyond full-on rock which come across as Swans were they merged with a jazz rock-influenced AC/DC. Clearly, sections are improvised. Maybe this is analogous with early Seventies fusion? At Studenterhuset, festival closers YARD – from Dublin – are similarly testing. They may have been listening to LCD Soundsystem. And Extreme Noise Terror. They go down a treat. (pictured right, Green Milk From The Planet Orange at Northern Winter Beat 2026. Jan Max Jessen)
On the face of it, Norway’s Jenny Hval may be hard to embrace in an on-stage setting due to the conceptual framings surrounding her records. However, the live iteration – drawing from her most recent album, last year’s Iris Silver Mist – is unexpectedly accessible. Moments suggest Broadcast and US experimental band The United States Of America. Great. At Huset, Matching Outfits are more accessible still, playing a form of late Velvet Underground-leaning indie rock with lyrics digging into day-to-day concerns. Before their third offering, singer Linnea Mårtensson announces “thank you, this next song is called ‘Toilet Paper’.”
As is evident, Northern Winter Beat seamlessly unites the approachable and immediately user-friendly with the demanding, the boundary pushing. The common thread is exploration – the desire to see how far a particular path can be taken. There are no half-way houses. All of these traits are embodied in one bundle of fun at 1000Fryd by the Hedvig Mollestad Trio, a band which has long sought to unite heavy metal and jazz as a cohesive whole. (pictured left, YARD at Northern Winter Beat 2026. Niels-Peter Fjeldsø Greve)
At this startling show, Mollestad (guitar), Ivar Loe Bjørnstad (drums) and Ellen Brekken (bass) enter an entirely self-determined musical landscape with their paint-peeling instrumentals. What’s going on may be rooted in Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, but it is expressed in a language of the trio’s own devising. Although Brekken does not play anything which is close to funk, the interplay of her bass and the constantly shifting drum patterns drums moves like…funk. Mollestad’s spiralling squalls of dissonance can be taken as riffs, but within one piece there are innumerable patterns. Nothing settles. The band is on fire.
It is a music which can be appreciated from different viewpoints. The power is inescapable. Heads in the audience nod. There is some reserved moshing. Heavy rock then. Or metal. With a grounding in out-there jazz. And there it is – the definition of the desire to see how far a particular path can be taken. At Northern Winter Beat, as the Hedvig Mollestad Trio confirms, it cannot be anything else.
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