Too loud, probably
Henry and I hadn't played together for quite a while.
That usually means things can get pretty loud and noisy when we finally meet again.
Petter was in Stockholm. Otherwise he would have joined us, but we were allowed to use his house, so it was just the two of us.
Henry was in some kind of rock 'n' roll mood. There was something rather Led Zeppelin-like about his playing, except much rougher and more distorted.
He was running a drone directly through his guitar amplifier instead of putting it on a separate channel. That made the sound very thick, and it also meant that I couldn't move the drone around independently afterwards. It was part of the guitar sound.
The whole piece is one continuous performance, taken from a longer recording.
Both ends of the stick
I had been practising Latin American rhythms and discovered something I was rather pleased with.
I think it started with a Brazilian baião. If I remember correctly, a triangle can be part of that music, played with a metal beater moving up and down. The alternating strokes can produce something almost like a shuffle.
I discovered that I could imitate some of that feeling on a ride cymbal by playing with both ends of the drumstick.
I had first worked it out on my 24-inch Paiste 602. That's a very large cymbal.
For this session, though, I was playing either a 20-inch Istanbul Traditional or a 22-inch Zildjian Kerope. I honestly can't remember which. The Kerope is a fantastic cymbal.
Both are a little too small to make the technique feel completely comfortable, but it worked.
When I find the rhythm, something happens to the hand. It almost starts oscillating on its own.
I'd also removed all the toms from the drum kit. I didn't want to spend time evaluating musical choices that weren't adding anything. I wanted to concentrate on what I was already doing.
Unfortunately, there was another problem.
The volume was brutal.
Especially the snare drum.
As I've been playing more with traditional grip, I've gradually angled the snare away from me. But when I switch back to matched grip, that angle makes it very easy to produce absolutely enormous rimshots.
And that's exactly what happened.
I was actually a little worried about my hearing.
Finding the next section
There's a particular passage in Wrong Pig that I really like.
We let go of one section and move into another.
I stay on the ride cymbal because my hand has found that strange, almost self-sustaining movement. Henry starts picking out individual notes, looking for somewhere else to take the music.
Then I begin playing rimshots against what he's doing.
For a moment, it feels swinging, jazzy and very heavy at the same time.
I particularly like these transitions in our recordings. Not just where we arrive, but what happens as we leave one thing behind and try to find the next.
Thomas Bryngelsson: Saab
The video was made afterwards, using bits of footage I had filmed without any particular intention of using them for anything.
They're simply situations I liked.
I cut them into pieces, rearranged them and placed several semi-transparent clips on top of one another. The scenes no longer appear in the order they originally happened.
One of the things you can see is a Saab 96 from 1966.
It belongs to my cousin Thomas Bryngelsson and is in exhibition condition.
This is the same cousin who, while we were helping our aunt, painted KUK on the wall I was supposed to be painting with Falu red paint. He even photographed it and sent the picture to my father, claiming I had done it.
The Saab footage comes from that same day.
Thomas also received a credit in the video:
Thomas Bryngelsson: Saab
Alongside Henry on guitar and me on drums and synthesizer.
Wrong Pig, then Fel Gris, then Wrong Pig
The original title was Wrong Pig.
I think I liked it because it sounded peculiar. It also brought together several things in my head: the countryside, and perhaps Black Sabbath's War Pigs.
For a while I called it Fel Gris, the Swedish version. But I changed it back to Wrong Pig. I think it works better in English.
I might also have been thinking about P. G. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle, where prize-winning pigs play an important part in the stories.
But I'm not entirely sure.
Did someone take the wrong pig?
What is a wrong pig?
And what, in that case, would be the right pig?