SHUT UP! LISTEN UP!

Where ARE we at the moment? The shit is up-side-down. Pandemic regulations and non-solidaric gestures. Political insanities. Globally and locally. Short term ethics and neglected esthetics. It is all a mess. This music totally comments these facts, evilly, clearly and brutally. Reflections of despair. Deeper concerns. Can music in general – and this music in specific – help us to understand, reflect and take action? Can it change? For sure it changes something, it makes us stand there… alone, with pants and chin down at ankles height. WTF? Is this shit for real? This shit IS for real! To put a label on this music does make no sense, whatsoever.

SHUT UP! LISTEN UP!

No compromises. To hell with all references. What we hear is a bunch of free-jazz-dudes KILLING IT! With the great help of “Viagra Boys” master-of-ceremonies, S. Murphy, contributing with some slaying Swedish lyrics, that could impossibly be translated.

SHUT UP! LISTEN UP!

This shit is taking no prisoners. InyourfaceMF! It goes deep. It goes beyond. As Grandmaster Joe McPhee always repeats and claims: ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING!

SHUT UP! LISTEN UP!

Throw yourself into it. This is radical gestures. This is dope. Like no other Swedes dare to do these days. The semi-skimmed-milk-days are OVER! Dig it or not! Put your full-body-mask-protection on. Hide. Run. Escape from it all. Coward! Or… just… SHUT UP! LISTEN UP!

The loudest motherF drummer ever, Mr E. Carlsson explodes and bursts into a percussive mayhem extraordinaire. The intensity of the musical core and wild energy is brilliantly navigated and led by Mr P. Thorman. Inter-punctuated rhythms and evil riffs swings madly with, against, over & under the clarinet- insanities of Mr. I. Hedtjärn (he has a very illustrative and romantic sounding 2nd name in Swedish… he is NONE of that!).

Mr Hedtjärn is creatively penetrative and super articulated on a level I have not heard him play before. This is IT! Mind-bending and face-melting. What else do we need? This shit rules! WhateverF**K you wanna call it – we could not care less. What we hear. (IS) What we hear! Is it beauty? Is this your kind of beauty?

SHUT UP! LISTEN UP!

I LOVE THIS! It has all the elements I appreciate the most in music, art and life: Improvisation, resistance and beauty! I have heard these guys for many years, creating their individual paths… building their legacies… but NEVER like this. This SHIT is really coming together (and deliberately apart!). I stand with pants and cheek down at ankles height, thinking: SHUT UP! LISTEN UP!

You still want the references, you lazy punks???

What we hear on the “GRISMASK” album is creative music of a rare and spectacular kind! These guys may have – or NOT – listened to other shit over the years, to arrive at the “GRISMASK” level of things! Who knows? Who wants to know? Whatever is the case: if you can´t hear it, just listen again: SHUT UP! LISTEN UP!

And if you wanna steal or borrow my intuitive reference-points at my subjective listening and enjoyment of this music, feel free, go ahead: For me… this music would have been impossible to get to, without passing through the beauty-filters of: Kurt Schwitters, Iggy Pop, Jimmy Guiffre, David Moss, The Cramps, Mike Watt, Dälek, Bengt Nordström, VU, Henry and Sonny Rollins, MC5, Raymond Strid, John Zorn, Zu, Åke Sandin, Yamatsuke Eye, 54 Nude Honeys, Albert Ayler, Fugazi, Amin & Rashied Ali, Fred Frith, Lightning Bolt, DJ Screw, Joe Maneri, Polly Bradfield, Wolf Eyes, Diamanda Galas, Mecki Mark Men, Perry Robinson, TGOS, Incapacitants, Shellac, Lee Konitz, The Sperm, Philemon Arthur and the Dung, Han Bennink or Börje Salming!

You never heard about em all?
Well, this mix of influences is NEW. It is RAD. It goes beyond…
SHUT UP! LISTEN UP!

IS this your first experience of such (non)pure Beauty-NoWave-Punk-Free Jazz-Downtown-Hardcore-Industrial-Sound Poetry-Cool Jazz-Grind-SHIT???

(SHUT UP and play your metal clarinet!)

SHUT UP! LISTEN UP!

ENJOY!

Mats Gustafsson, Feb – 2021, Nickelsdorf, Austria