The 40 minutes long performance recorded live at Permian in Tokyo will be released on vinyl and on streaming platforms April 24:th 2026. To celebrate the release the duo will announce new performances of the piece ‘One Step Closer to the Abyss’, previously performed in Tokyo, Fukuoka, Beijing, Paris and Sousse.
London based composer and musician Tomas Nordmark and Paris based musician and visual artist Per Hüttner have been working together since 2021. Together they develop creative and visionary performances using the technology platform the EEGsynth. The EEGsynth is a hard- and software platform that allows performers to create sounds and images using neural signals from the human nerves and brain. The technology is unique because it has been has been developed by European artists, musicians in close collaboration with neuroscientists since 2014. In the performances the artists use measurements of a performer’s brain signal on his/her head using an electro encephalogram (EEG) in real time.
In the performance entitled “One Step Closer to the Abyss” they present music and images that are generated and modulated by a performers brain activity in real time. They work with sounds from a traditional electric guitar which has been modulated by the brain multiple times to create aesthetically interesting sounds. They also have dynamic visuals that are influenced in real time by the brain. The performance takes its inspiration from Mark Fisher’s writings and his reflections on the weird and the eerie: how humans and art deal with the unknown in their everyday and in artistic creation.
The EEGsynth platform is used by artists and researchers in Sweden, France, Norway, the Netherlands and in the UK. They use signals from the human brain, but also from trees, fish and microbes to create performances. The team has made over 80 performances and workshops in a number of European countries, Mexico, Egypt, Brazil and the US. There has been a lot of interest both in the performances and in the technology. For instance French film maker Fabien Guillermont has made a full length documentary on the project.
Per Hüttner is a Swedish visual artist who lives and works in Paris, France and in Stockholm, Sweden. He graduated from Konsthögskolan in Stockholm 1993. He also studied at Hochschule der Künste in Berlin 1991-1992. He is mostly known for his photographic work and for his interactive, changing and travelling exhibition projects. A number of monographs about his practice has been published including Per Hüttner, 2003; I am a Curator, 2004; Repetitive Time 2006, Xiao Yao You 2006 and Democracy and Desire 2007
Tomas Nordmark is a Swedish-born artist, composer and producer living and working in London, United Kingdom. He was educated at the Department of Culture and Society at the University of Linköping in Sweden where he studied Audio Culture and Contemporary Art. His compositions and works have been featured in opera, public installations, film, theatre plays and in exhibitions. Since 2019 he has released music on the Brooklyn-based label Valley of Search with live performances in London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Helsinki, Ljubljana, Tokyo and more.
Composed and performed live by Per Hüttner and Tomas Nordmark at Permian | Tokyo, May 31, 2024
Recorded, edited, mixed + artwork designed by Tomas Nordmark
Photography + video still by Per Hüttner
Mastered by Philip Granqvist
The artists would like to thank Riuichi Daijo, Philip Granqvist, Atau Tanaka, Jo Kazuhiro, Christophe Charles and Carl Stone
Listen to the albums: Apple Music – Spotify – Tidal
Cedar
1. Cedar, Pt. 1 – 20:40
2. Cedar, Pt. 2 – 20:41
Neroli
1. Neroli, Pt. 1 – 20:57
2. Neroli, Pt. 2 – 20:11
Vetiver
1. Vetiver, Pt. 1 – 20:35
2. Vetiver, Pt. 2 – 21:08
Violet
1. Violet, Pt. 1 – 18:32
2. Violet, Pt. 2 – 23:33
Composed, produced, mixed by Tomas Nordmark
Guest performers:
Johan Skugge (bass, Cedar)
Harriet Riley (percussion, Vetiver)
Simon McCorry (cello, Neroli)
Claudia Squitieri (spoken words, Violet)
Jay-Jay Johanson (spoken words, Violet)
Mastering by Philip Granqvist
Exit (Tomas Nordmark – ‘Exit Ghosts’, May 14:th 2021 via Valley of Search)
Listen to Exit Ghosts: Apple Music – Bandcamp – Spotify – Tidal
Having cultivated a deep appreciation for conceptual art and the phase-shifting minimalism pioneered by the downtown avant-garde community of NYC in the ‘60s, Nordmark set out to blend that with his pop-oriented upbringing and unique perspective on electronic music. The Swedish-born, London-based composer credits university as the formative period during which these various interests coalesced, and ever since, he’s been pursuing an intellectually rigorous musical style that blends cathartic melodies with a deeply felt ideal of truth through art.
For Exit Ghosts, Nordmark’s stirring new album, and a spiritual sequel to his 2019 debut LP, Eternal Words, he wanted to build upon the strict structures that the first record was created in. Exit Ghosts pulses with an unrelenting energy, waving and cresting around ambient tension and gorgeously realized melodies. “I wanted to be very deliberate in my approach,” he explains. “I made a few decisions to strictly limit my technical palette, such as using only one synth. I wanted to mirror the process-based work introduced by minimalist composers, but to elaborate and update it. I’ve been working on this process since Eternal Words, and Exit Ghosts is in conversation with that album.”
Though the two feed off of each other, Nordmark’s forthcoming album exists in its own universe. On “Ghosts,” which features vocals by South London duo Waterbaby, the album’s only guests, percussion mirrors a heartbeat and choir-like vocals give the song an ethereal edge equal parts inviting and unnerving. On “Aftertime,” strings wispily float across the composition while synths recall the emotive groan of a foghorn searching for light through the mist. Within the world Nordmark’s built, he manages to explore a vast amount of territory despite the limited tools he’s allowed himself.
Exit Ghosts is partly influenced by the history of film scores and the aesthetics carried by that tradition. As an instrumental album, Nordmark is tasked with conjuring emotions without words, and the way he utilizes specific cues mirrors the process of film scores, in addition to the work of seminal composers such as Tim Hecker, Arthur Russell, and Jóhann Jóhannsson.
Much of the album was also inspired by the writing of Mark Fisher, a British cultural theorist with an emphasis on politics, popular culture, and music. Nordmark found a commonality between Fisher’s ideas of lost futures and his own feelings towards pop culture. “I believe there are certain things in our society that hinder pop culture from progressing into the future,” he says, before adding, “I thought to myself, ‘If I’m going to make music, I want it to be in response to these writings.’” In that sense, Nordmark is residing over a world in which the immediate consumerism of 21st century music apparatuses are reimagined to support a bold frontier. “I wanted to see if I could make something that felt totally new, and by using a strict process, I was able to disconnect myself from the work in a curious way.”
Nordmark began the album right before the first lockdown in the UK, back in March of 2020. Informed by the choral hymns and folk tunes of Nordic tradition, Nordmark began editing and cutting fragments of melodies layering and then sequencing them according to a strict process of creating new melodic textures through a process he calls ‘hyper-anachronism.’ From there, he let the process work itself out, using the intuition of the notes themselves to guide the direction of his work. Though Exit Ghosts is entirely informed by this strict set of rules Nordmark commits himself to, the work still functions both inside and outside of this world. It’s a testament to Nordmark’s ability to translate his ideas into a style of music that works both intellectually and as an a priori feeling that exists in all of us.
“My system partly begins with math, but it becomes emotional. It twists, and the structure ends in a different place than it began. That’s why I find creation so thrilling.” Nordmark sets up a situation through which unintentional ingenuity can occur, and Exit Ghosts is, in this sense, an album―a brilliant one at that―that is equal parts deliberate and accidental. Tomas Nordmark concocts situations for the unexpected to occur, and in that universe, unending beauty is slowly revealed.
Human (Tomas Nordmark – ‘Eternal Words’ released 2019 via Valley of Search)
Listen to Eternal Words: Apple Music – Bandcamp – Spotify – Tidal
“Eternal Words” is the debut solo album by Tomas Nordmark, an experimental Swedish composer, sound artist and designer living and working in London, United Kingdom. Nordmark was educated at the University of Linköping in Sweden where he studied Audio Culture and Contemporary Art. His compositions and works have been featured in short films, theatre plays and in exhibitions. Nordmark will release his debut album in early 2019.
The slow and evolving phase-shifting compositions on ”Eternal Words” are based on the same principle used by the American minimalists (specifically Terry Riley and Steve Reich), while the melodic textures are based on ancient Scandinavian music and sacred hymns — a tonality far from the downtown NYC avant garde. With this juxtaposition ”Eternal Words” builds a forward-looking electronic soundscape, escaping the repetitive loop of contemporary time without imposing any specific stylistic dogma.
”synthesised drones and bleeps that manage to tell stories that resolve without even hinting at melody”
The Guardian
”a meditative, nearly ambient foundation: sustained, consonant tones like distant horns”
The New York Times
“Eternal Words” was released January 25, 2019 via Valley of Search. Order the LP at Bandcamp.
www.tomasnordmark.com
tomasnordmark.bandcamp.com
www.valleyofsearch.com
Valley of Search began as a vehicle to reissue jazz saxophonist Alan Braufman’s 1975 album of the same name. Now, with it’s second release by Swedish minimalist electronic composer, Tomas Nordmark, Valley of Search exists as a home for adventurous, forward thinking music, unbound by genre or decade.
“Human” is the third single from the debut solo album “Eternal Words” by Tomas Nordmark.
“Human,” an electronic instrumental by the Swedish composer Tomas Nordmark, has a meditative, nearly ambient foundation: sustained, consonant tones like distant horns. But the foreground is jittery, full of unpredictable, glassy tones that briefly hover, then disappear. Mood: inscrutable.
New York Times
“Words” is the second single from the debut solo album “Eternal Words” by Tomas Nordmark.
“Speaking” is the first single from the debut solo album “Eternal Words” by Tomas Nordmark.
A limited edition split cassette tape with Swedish sound artist Edward Mokkila
A series of ambient works based on traditional hymns part of the “Future Hymn” project.
Contemplation #244 was premiered at Norrköpings Konstmuseum 8:th of October 2016.