Speedbump is a play with serious things, sometimes we are forced to stop in the middle of life's most intense moments; collisions, friction, resistance, desirable or undesirable events forces us to a moment of reflection, sometimes we learn something, often we take knocks again and again. Speedbump was composed in Studio Alpha at VICC in Visby and the final mix was done at EMS in Stockholm. The work had its first performance at Cinéma pour d´oreille during Nuit Bleue 2010 in Arc-et-Senans France and has since then been played in many festivals in Spain, Greece, UK and Sweden. This is a stereo mix from the original 5.0 surround mix and lacks some spacial qualities. The stereo version gives a good perspective of the composition and have been performed in many concerts.

Speedbump

Then sounds abruptly slips out of  my tight grip, in sudden burst they pop out on the timeline, they sway and toss to keep their balance, sworn to never leave their place again.

The human mind is a perfect tool for many trades and in most situations we can trust it to guide us to the right conclusions. Sometimes the effort of dwelling on a thought is much to large in this world of exponential growth, so we rush on and often lose the chance of real adventure. As a composer I search for the ability to stop the action, to take a slice of life and hold it to the light in hopes of revealing the mystery that lays within.
    The music in Unplucked originated from an acoustic guitar in search for the sounds beyond the tradition of the instrument. The sounds from the first recording session was somewhat electrical and the feeling of the situation was very unplugged although no strings was plucked. In the studio I continued the efforts of the guitarplayer to go beyond the instruments sonic capabilities. I applied heavy filtering and compression to squeeze the sounds until they gasped for their acousmatic breath. 
    In Unplucked the illusion of movement is mostly created in the listeners mind. The artificial acoustics is often used in a transition between an apparent room within a room and a spacial guide pointing towards the illusion of acousmatic movement. Many of the sounds are doubled and repeted but they always keep a strict position where the speakers are placed (in the original 5.0 channel setting). 
    There will always be interplay between the listeners mind and the presented possibility for the hearing of Unplucked. The mind can not be totaly trusted on the task of revealing the acousmatic truth of this work of soundart. My mission as an artist is to revisit the evident to reveal it’s beutiful yet elusive nature.
    Unplucked was composed at NOVARS research center at Manchester University UK during an Artistic Residency in the autumn of 2008 with the support from Helge Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse. Additional work was made at EMS in Stockholm and the mastering in Studio Alpha at VICC in Visby Sweden. Many thanks to Johan Sundberg for his prolific and profound skills on his acoustic guitar. In the memory of the Karplus-Strong Plucked-string synthesis algorithm.

Unplucked

It’s slipps out of hand and lives a life of it’s own
Nothing can get hold of it even if all efforts where put on one snap
It rips everything apart and shows the world what’s inside
And violently closes it’s gap and leaves all standing
On the inside the shimmering light still lingers on
Until the end of time
This music is performed by an octet of trompaphones and an quartet of swischers. It was written for the anniversary and celebration of 50 years with Chilean Electro-acoustic Music and first performed at the Ai-Maako festival 2006. It was commisioned by Comunidad Electroacoustica de Chile, CECH.

Decipher

The titel and the work is inspired by and refers to my first visit to Berlin and there is a really confused flight to Berlin added as a spice to the mix. The music was composed in may 2014 in Studio Alpha at VICC Visby international Composer Center supported by a grant from The Swedish Society of Composers. It was first performed at a Metanast concerts at Mediacity UK in Manchester.

Landing In Berlin

Tvåfemtvå is a miniature with strong inspiration from the composer John Cage's works for prepared piano. This music was long in my thoughts but the opportunity never arose until in May 2016 in the Alpha Studio at Visby Composers Centre Sweden. A pianist would never be able to play this work so it had to be a friendly humanoid with a third arm that had to do the job.

Tvåfemtvå

The soundtrack of the movie Great White Open, a short edit of the audiovisual Solitude-Silence project by Thomas Bjelkeborn and Michael Larsson. For more info about Solitude-Silence go to <a href="https://bjelkeborn.se/solitude/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://bjelkeborn.se/solitude/</a>/. For info about Thomas Bjelkeborn visit <a href="https://soundquartet.se" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://soundquartet.se</a>/
"Solitude Silence has a desolate setting, it is vast and empty at the same time as there are movements occupying the visual and audible space. A white washed-out surface and the slow structures of sound has no less characteristics than one which is busy. In this, there is an emergence of a being embodied with the space. One can sense dislocation and perceive disappearance. The movement however, being utterly organic and integrated with space, provides layers of continuity of a different time."
During the night of NuitBlanche2011 in Paris, 6700 people visited, experienced, watched, listened, floated, flowed during the 6 hour performance by Thomas Bjelkeborn and Michael Larsson outdoors in the yard at the Swedish Institute. Glamour magazine <a href="http://tinyurl.com/cfn7r8k">http://tinyurl.com/cfn7r8k</a> had this project as number 1 out of ten mentioned from the 140 art projects shown the same night, Vogue <a href="http://tinyurl.com/d3emz82">http://tinyurl.com/d3emz82</a> as second out of eleven, GQ http://tinyurl.com/dxt67yo as one out of the ten most interesting project, two swedes did rule the nation for one night in Paris.

Solitude Silence

In Love in the eye of queen Mab Thomas Bjelkeborn reforms the old swedish text-sound tradition in an exciting exploration of Shakespear. This is the second piece in a cycle of six pieces with inspiration from the play Romeo and Julia by William Shakespear. Again the composer collaborates with the renowned swedish actress Therese Brunnander of the Royal Theatre Dramaten in Stockholm Sweden.
In this piece the focus is on the celtic myth about Queen Mab who is the "fairies' midwife" in combination with the instant when Romeo and Julia falls in love at first sight.The music tries to balance the trembling anxiety for loosing yourself in an intense love at first sight. Somehow the aire of Queen Mab obscures Romeo and Julia and the music enters a mystical world of dilution. Maybe queen Mab visits us through this music to tempt us to endure our love for her, a love on the verge between fear and joy.
The music was created in 2008 during a artistic residency in Visby International Composers Center in Sweden with the support of a grant from Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation. The first performance appeared at ElektroMediaWorks08 in Athens Greece.
This is a mastering edit done in 2011.

Image of Queen Mab by CircuitDruid. Please support CircuitDruid and check out all wonderful artwork at <a href="http://circuitdruid.deviantart.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://circuitdruid.deviantart.com</a>/. Please notice rights is reserved by circuitdruid deviantart.com . Please contact Circuitdruid if you want to use the picture.

The composer has chosen parts of the text as follows:
Act I, Scene iv
Mercutio
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;

Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,

Her whip of cricket's bone,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm

Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut

And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;

Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,

This is that very Mab

That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:

This is she—

Romeo
 Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!
Thou talk'st of nothing.

Mercutio
True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air

Act I, Scene v:
Romeo
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.



Love In The Eye Of Queen Mab

This music for trumpet and electronics was created during a residency at Auriculab Teneriffa as a collaboration with Joachim Spieth on trumpet. This recording was made at Salón de Actos de La Sección de BBAA La Laguna Tenerifi in Spain 11 november 2016.

Mouthpiece Alpha

In Alpha Position U I wanted to create a sense of movement without moving any sounds. I tried to limit all spectral changes to avoid unnecessary blending and placed the sounds at exactly the speakers positions. Any travel in space is an illusion created by spectral diffusion between the speakers and the acoustics of the listeners room. The music is a distinctive five channel piece which could have been played by five musicians (and a ghost) standing exactly where the speakers are (+ virtuel center back). This stereo version is a mere reflection of the original but still works to give you an option of being in the Alpha position of my soundworld.
    The music was composed in autumn 2007 in Studio Alpha at Visby International Center for Composers in Sweden with a grant awarded by The Swedish Society of Composers.


Alpha Position U

Swingding (2011) is concentrated around a core of rhythmic sound objects in an effort to make clean simple lines while maintaining a musical unrulyness. Illusory movements of the sound in a play with time and space in an improvisational musical form with a strong effort forward. Swingding was composed during artistic residencies at NOVARS Manchester UK and Inventives Musiques d'Annecy France from 2009 to 2011 and was finalized at EMS in Stockholm in october 2011. Premiered at La Tabacalera Madrid Spain.

Swingding

This music is my tribute to Frank Zappa, Greggery Peccary and Nasal Retentive Calliope Music. I re-used a lot of Zappas compositional collage technique from his earlier acousmatic works and combined that with his latter manners in his synclavier compositions. My choice of sounds is very closely related to Zappas soundworld, they are entirely my own but with a Zappa twist. The music celebrates the fact that Zappa once started as a drummer and in the early sixties went to the Darmstadt Ferienkurse to study new music. The music hopefully makes you sense the playful manner of a freejazz drummer being Caged in a Zappa syndrome. It was first performed in october 2012 at a Phonos Concert in Barcelona. This is a stereo mix from the original 5.0 surround mix and lacks some spacial qualities. The stereo version gives a good perspective of the composition and have been performed in many concerts.

The Zipper from the Black Lagoon

Thomas Bjelkeborn is a composer, musician and sound artist. He is the initiator of IDKA, PUSH Festival and has curated concerts since 1988 at Fylkingen Stockholm. He often collaborates with international institutions and internationally active composer / musician at residences in UK, Spain, France and other countries, and tours frequently in Europe with live electronic ensemble SQ / Sound Quartet.
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Thomas Bjelkeborn är verksam inom nutida konstmusik sedan 1988, och är främst etablerad som EAM-tonsättare i internationella sammanhang, ofta inom ramen för tonsättarresidens vid framstående musik- och forskningsinstitutioner. I hans arbete undersöker han ofta relationen mellan traditionellt akustiska instrument och dess elektroniska förlängningar. Han hämtar inspiration i 1900-talets sena modernism och hos elektroniska pionjärer som Schaeffer och Stockhausen. Hans musik tar utgångspunkt i aktuell musikteknisk innovation med målet att utvidga konstmusikens domäner, där egenutvecklade fysiskt-digitala musikinstrument ofta kombineras med avancerad audiovisuell media. De senaste tre åren har Thomas Bjelkeborn genomfört ett 100-tal konserter i över tio länder, bl a vid de internationellt betydelsefulla festivalerna Audio Art Festival Krakow, In-sonora Madrid och Sonorities Belfast. Han är även konstnärlig ledare för ensemblen Sound Quartet, som förvaltar kvartettformen med nytt perspektiv, framför allt genom användande av live-elektronik och realtidsbearbetning av instrumentklanger. Kvartetten samarbetar ofta med gästande musiker, t ex ondes martenot-spelaren Nadia Ratsimandresy (Paris) och röstkonstnären Viv Corringham (New York), och haft turnéstöd från Kulturrådet. Genom tonsättarresidens (t ex vid Auriculab Spanien och NOVARS Manchester) och konstnärliga utbyten med utlandet har han fördjupat sin kunskap om komposition och utökat sina kontakter med tonsättare och musiker från hela världen. Sedan 2015 är Thomas Bjelkeborn knuten till Sound and Physical Interaction Research Group (SOPI), Aalto University i Helsingfors, för komposition och konstnärlig utveckling i samarbete med Dr Koray Tahiroglu. Deras första verk är KET (2016), ett beställningsverk via Kulturrådet med stöd av Helge Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse som de senaste åren framförts bl a på NIME Brisbane och Cafe OTO London. Han är även ideellt verksam som curator för regelbundna konserter på Fylkingen i Stockholm samt för PUSH-festivalen i Gävle.

Bjelkeborn

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