Musical works

We often hear that in the aftermath of an explosion or a similarextreme shock, there reigns a strange silence: a sort ofinner, timeless silence that drowns out the outer tumult. The title"calm like a bomb" calls to mind that type of contradictoryphenomenon. And in the sensual central part of this work timedoes indeed seem to stand still. Jesper Nordin borrowed the titlefrom a track by the group “Rage against the machine”. It waswritten for violin and tape, the tape part consisting ofarrangements of improvisations and variations on a lullaby. Here,Nordin has edited material from the folk/rock musician FredrikLindqvist, violinist Daniel Frankel and the folk singer SofiaKarlsson, whose voice and vocal technique play an importantrole in defining the character of the music. As the music passesinto the final section, it does so through the emergence of a kindof tick-tock, mechanical music, and with this slightly limpingmarch of alternating meters and accents, calm like a bomb endsin something reminiscent of a more “urban” sound milieu. ForNordin himself, "calm like a bomb" was a seminal work on theroute towards an individual idiom. The piece has been played at anumber of international festivals and has been awarded severalprizes.
Tony Lundman