When Efterklang announced an event called The Last Concert in their home town of Sonderborg on the Danish island Als, their fans took them at their word. “I think we just underestimated the power of how people sometimes want to get lost in the headline,” says founding member Rasmus Stolberg. “At the time, we had become this household name and people expected another tour, another album. But suddenly when you say, ‘This is the last one,’ then they get frightened. Social media loves drama.”

What they meant was quite different: a creative rebirth rather than a death for the band formed by three friends 15 years ago. Four albums down, including their last and most successful, Piramida, they peered at a future of recycling the same old songs and baulked, agreeing never to play any of their old material after this gig. “We walked on stage with the feeling that we’re going to play these songs for the last time, not with the feeling that we weren’t going to make music together again,” says Stolberg of the concert that featured a local orchestra and choir, captured here by Paris-based director and Arcade Fire collaborator Vincent Moon with a performance of early song “Monopolist.” 

Efterklang now concentrate on projects that can ferment without the strictures of 20th-century rock norms, from creating sounds with neuroscientists and co-founding a new radio station The Lake Radio, to starting a new band with Finnish percussionist Tatu Rönkkö and composing an opera that will premiere in Copenhagen next year.  "In a way, it is closure," says Stolberg. "I don’t think we feel a desire to cling on to that time. It’s nice to remind yourself and other people that things don’t last forever.”

Piramida is out now on 4AD.