An Evening at the FRIM FALL International Festival

What a great evening. I ended up making a spontaneous visit to the FRIM FALL International Festival tonight.

By pure chance, I stumbled into Källarbyn yesterday, Friday, while they were doing the soundcheck. It looked very interesting. Someone was playing obscure drum patterns while someone else was testing their synth with mysterious sounds. I was obviously hooked, but I had other plans for the rest of the evening.

Tonight, however, three very interesting acts were playing there.

First up was Musho, which, according to the programme, consists of Sofia Jernberg and Alexander Hawkins on piano.

I like listening to challenging music. It is something I consider part of who I am and my personality – something people around me often point out, and something I perhaps ought to keep in mind when choosing background music for dinner or a party. It tends to get difficult and unbearable.

So being subjected to Musho was a rather unusual situation for me.

Alexander was producing incredibly hard-to-digest piano inventions. I had no idea you could get sounds like that out of a tuned piano. How does he do it? It’s magic.

Sometimes the sounds came rushing out soft and smooth, or slightly thoughtful and hesitant, only to suddenly and completely unexpectedly hit the eardrum with enormous force.

One section was particularly difficult for me, and I started wondering if I was developing some kind of panic attack. But I closed my eyes and tried to relax. That turned out to be a good move. It became much easier, and I could see soundscapes unfolding like dreams.

Are there demons in this music? I wondered.

Is he transmitting entities to us?

Is he trying to hurt us, or to transform us?

And then there was Sofia, luring us into what were sometimes strangely safe and comforting worlds, only to twist them completely out of shape and attack us. Long stretches of quiet growling suddenly appeared.

There were lots of different languages. I could identify at least three.

Is she possessed?

Is she channelling fleeting spirits that are still lingering in the caves of Källarbyn?

Suddenly, there was applause. For a split second, I thought: is this Stockholm syndrome?

There was a fifteen-minute break, during which I could catch my breath and talk to my son, who had come along with me. He thought it was interesting and good, but he didn't quite share my occult experience.

Next up was Exhaust.

Apparently, they were the group who had been sitting next to us on the same sofa during the first performance.

Camila Nebbia stood ready with her saxophone. Kit Downes was doing mouth gymnastics at the piano, and I could barely see Andrew Lisle, who was playing behind a pillar and the grand piano lid.

They started together, everything happening at once, but with a controlled intensity and, compared with Musho, an almost groovy rhythm section.

Then it developed into a cascade of wild drums and saxophone that sounded like something straight out of David Lynch’s *Lost Highway*. You know – that saxophone player whose house is haunted by someone who films him and his wife sleeping with a VHS camera and leaves the tapes in their mailbox every day.

It screams, and it is wild across the entire frequency spectrum.

Kit goes completely Jack Torrance from *The Shining* on his grand piano. At times he is practically inside the instrument, plucking the strings – something I later discover is more or less standard practice in this particular genre.

For me, this is really good. And much easier to digest.

Andrew is a fantastic drummer. The whole set ends with the fastest hi-hat playing I have ever heard. It must have been something like 128th notes. When it finally ends, he slows the pattern down like an engine being switched off.

We get half an hour to breathe before it is time for the final act.

The presenter introduces the next band and explains that what we are about to experience is something major on the European contemporary improvisation scene.

This is a cool bunch of guys:

Mazen Kerbaj – trumpet

Magda Mayas – piano

Mike Majkowski – double bass

Tony Buck – drums

Mazen is shaved-headed, with a black moustache and black glasses, wearing a cut-off T-shirt. Mike looks like a sophisticated stoner-rock musician, with his cool moustache and wild hair. Magda has a huge, wild mass of hair and a whole bunch of electronics stuffed inside the grand piano.

And off we go.

This is fascinating. I’m really digging it.

They create these fully improvised, beautifully crafted soundscapes that we seem to fly across.

Why are they called Das B? I wonder. What could it mean?

Surely it can't have anything to do with U96's early-’90s hit *Das Boot*. Probably not.

These guys are cool and exciting.

The music is grinding and hypnotic, with a groove that feels as if it comes from another dimension – perhaps one that has just come into existence right here and now.

Suddenly there is a piercing sound.

I can't see what Mazen is doing behind the piano lid, perhaps something with the trumpet, but the sound is razor-sharp and seems to shoot off in different directions. It sounds like the perfect solo sound for exactly this particular moment.

A little later, I remember a bass line that actually holds a rhythm. It moves quickly between perhaps three or four notes. I have no idea how Mike can play it that fast and that precisely on a double bass.

Slowly, the music fades away.

It sounds exactly as if someone is gradually turning down the volume control on a mixing desk – except they are doing it manually.

Geniuses.

It turned out to be a fantastic evening, with three completely different and equally fascinating experiences.

Many thanks for that!

Johan Bring