Programme notes:

We often hear that in the aftermath of an explosion or a similar extreme shock, there reigns a strange silence: a sort of inner, timeless silence that drowns out the outer tumult. The title "calm like a bomb" calls to mind that type of contradictory phenomenon. And in the sensual central part of this work time does indeed seem to stand still, for despite all the dry time indications of the score, the music hovers freely there for several minutes before gradually heading towards the doggedly ticking conclusion. Jesper Nordin borrowed the title from a track by the group “Rage against the machine”. It was written for violin and tape, the tape part consisting of arrangements of improvisations and variations on a lullaby. Here, Nordin has edited material from the folk/rock musician Fredrik Lindqvist, violinist Daniel Möller and the folk singer Sofia Karlsson, whose voice and vocal technique play an important role in defining the character of the music. There is also a more private reference in the music: the lullaby that forms the work’s tonal base was written by Nordin’s father, Batte Sahlin. It is most clearly distinguishable in the low vocal sound of the tape part in the middle of the composition. "calm like a bomb" is hypnotic rather than soothing or explosive. While the notation can be quite approximate at times, at others it is more precise, with accurate timing information and simple graphic references to the tape part as checkpoints for the violinist. Taken to a more abstract level, this is music that seems, if anything, to develop within the texture of the sound itself. The articulation is therefore particularly crucial. Hard pressure with the bow produces a kind of muffled rasping during the hurried violin movements of the introduction. The mid section is more open with soft appoggiatura and a slight folksy phrasing. As the music passes into the final section, it does so through the emergence of a kind of tick-tock, mechanical music, and with this slightly limping march of alternating meters and accents, calm like a bomb ends in something reminiscent of a more “urban” sound milieu. For Nordin himself, "calm like a bomb" was a seminal work on the route towards an individual idiom. The piece has been played at a number of international festivals and has been awarded several prizes. Tony Lundman English translation: Neil Betteridge