The studio works of Swedish band Ensemble Nimbus include the out-of-print Key figures (1995), Scapegoat (1998) and their excellent last recording Garmonbozia (2000), but the fan can also acquire a video in concert that was published in 1998 that includes a performance that the band carried out in the Lilla Teatern in 1995, after issuing their first works. The video is compatible with the PAL system, on VHS format, and it is extremely interesting. 

According to Håkan Almkvist himself, “the whole project was made with a very, very low budget, including only one camera and one person in charge of the lights for the show. There was no time for rehearsals together with the dancer, the painter, the cameraman, the light technician and the sound engineer.

So, what you see is fully improvised by all the elements that took part to it, nobody really knew what or when the other was going to do something else before it happened.

The final mix of the video included parts recorded during two days of performances at the Lilla Teatern in April 1995. Thus, the second day, every involved person could improve his own individual participation, but still no more rehearsals took place before the show, and it was carried out in front of the audience.

We had a big problem when the video had to be edited, because the recordings from one of the shows that were done directly on a 2 track master Dat-tape recorder (by Roine Stolt) were distorted and therefore impossible to use. So, with only one camera filming each show and no rehearsal before, plus some sound problems, it became a hard task to make something enjoyable out of it. That's also the reason why it became impossible to include all the tracks played during the show. After quite a long time and much work of editing the video, Kele Krantz finally made it possible to happen.

What else can I say? Nobody knew each other before and we had never worked together in any other projects like this before.

The reason why we included a painter and a dancer to the music was mainly because it's hard to play, and our musician task had us fully concentrated, and therefore we couldn’t make the effort of bringing a visual show and having a good contact with the audience. If you want to make a video with that kind of music, it is even more important to do something with the visual part!". 

The ones that took part in this project were, as placed on the stage from left to right, (according to the public's perspective), Stefan Carlsson (keyboards), Lars Björk (clarinet, low clarinet), Hasse Bruniusson (electronic drums), Håkan Almkvist (guitar, bass, vocals) and Kirk Chilton (violin). All of them were standing in line, making slightly the shape of an U, with the nearest ends to the public. As the performance was going on, and depending on the track, a dancer -Ragma Weegar- or a painter -Andreas Brännlund– were also included at the back of the stage, both of them with very avant-garde aesthetics and acting according to the music itself. And… what does Ensemble Nimbus present us in this concert? Well, a very free performance of the music included in their first album Key figures, based on a concept that the band has completely controlled the improvisation. It is certainly not complicated to recognize the album tracks, but there are also some improvised parts that take the music to unknown places, and it is possible to recognize that there are some fragments close to free-jazz, to electronic music, to the most radical RIO and even to cacophony. And indeed, the sound comes really closer to the one introduced by King Crimson in their destructive Thrakattak in some different moments. The track "Introduction" that is the starting point for the rest of the video is already a serious warning of what the fan will find here: five free musicians 100% committed to their work. You won't find any concessions to the gallery, but full concentration in the noble art of music and creation. As the images go from one musician to another, there are two of them that capitalize a majority of them: Hasse Bruniusson, carrying out a brutal performance at the electronic drums, while being mentally lost in music; and Håkan Almkvist, dedicated to his glass sounding guitars and the powerful basses.  

The tracks freely follow one another, and it is possible to enjoy truly distorted versions of “The battle”, “Indecent turnings”, “Streamdrum”, “Against the stream”, “Against the stream”, “The key figure”, “The commotion”, “The schramscraper” y “The baby-farmer”. I won't show any preference of a topic on another, because the revisions are all excellent, I will simply note that half of the video offers some spectacular improvisations and that it is difficult to believe that the musicians –such great musicians - had not rehearsed previously. 

It was a great idea to have a dancer and a painter, because without them, the performance would have been a little lame. In this sense, it is good to know that the visual aspect was the reason for their incorporation to the show, due to the fact that initially, I had thought that their presence responded to a desire of making “total art performance", that is to say, to the intention of offering a show that included all the arts together.  

I remember that when I had the videotape it was so excited that I put it at my parents’ home at full volume, which gave the result that they only tolerated the first three tracks. New generations are unforgiving, and Ensemble Nimbus belongs to a generation for the future. When you acquire it, you will have to acknowledge the reliability of my recommendation. Considering that Key figures is out-of-print, what could be better than seeing and listening to this video.

Jaume Pujol - December 2000