Eljo (DK)

Dreamy Sound Universe with Jazz and Electronic Music 

In the intersection of acoustic and electronic music, ELJO creates a meditative, dreamy sound universe with elements of modern Nordic jazz and minimalist electronic music. With Elias Lykkeskov and Johannes Bohn on keyboards and drums, ELJO is a unique concert experience where all elements - both electronic and acoustic - are played live on stage. 

The creative impetus for ELJO was an ambition to push musical boundaries by merging and uniting programmed and repetitive electronic music with improvisational jazz - two seemingly contradictory genres. Elias and Johannes both started their musical careers as jazz musicians, but both ended up burned out by the performance culture and competitiveness of the jazz environment. 

Elias says: “ The jazz environment I was in had a lingering sense that things always had to be faster, wilder, and more complex. I wasn't comfortable with that - neither musically nor personally - and that led me to explore a different kind of music." 

Johannes adds: "I was part of the jazz scene in Denmark, Holland, and Sweden, and everywhere I experienced an almost religious worship of the great jazz legends of the past. Jazz schools don't train you to find your expression, they train you to copy what has already been done 65-70 years ago, which is both impossible and uncreative. It reduces jazz to a textbook - a genre that originally wanted to push boundaries and put new things together." 

The two musicians moved away from jazz and into the musical landscape, where they began working with other genres such as pop, hip-hop, electronic music, and folk. With ELJO, the two musicians take the best of their jazz past and fuse it with the best of the electronic sound they later cultivated into a contemporary, forward-thinking musical expression. 

ELJO is currently working on a debut album, which is expected to be released in the fall of 2024.