Hyper Elastic Jinx - We Vote Force Majeure (Barefoot Records, 2026)

By Brian Earley 

 

Let it happen at our peril.

 

This is the title of the final track on We Vote Force Majeure, a powerfully free set of collective improvisations by the band Hyper Elastic Jinx, and it is a prophetic warning.

 

For instance, climate change is projected to increase coastal flooding around Norway, Denmark, and Germany, where the musicians on this album primarily reside, by a factor of 10, 100, or even 1000 depending upon emissions scenarios.

 

“Let It Happen At Our Peril,” the song, opens with two saxophones, one the alto of Signe Emmeluth, one a tenor played by Nana Pi, both of whom are deeply connected to the Scandinavian experimental music scene. The saxophones warp and twist around each other as the song progresses. By mid-tune, the piece has erupted into a catastrophic explosion of sound, with drummer Halym Kim crashing down on the snare and cymbals, and guitarist Keisuki Matsuno firing hits and chords full of color and fuzzy, chorus-filled reverb that sounds to me like it's played on an old Fender amp built in the 1970s. Kim and Nana Pi have played extensively together on the Northern European scene, including on the 2022 album Tactical Maybe , a gorgeous and raucous experimental work I highly encourage everyone to check-out. Matsuno, on the other hand, has ties to the John Zorn world, playing on Zorn’s Bagatelles Volume 11 in 2022 with Jim Black. Emmeluth, of course, has forged a fiery reputation as dynamo of what the Free Jazz Collective has called The New Danish Thing.

 

But We Vote Force Majeure is not about its individual performers. It is an album of collective free improvisation for which all musicians share equally in the song-writing credits. It is a community in communion with the greater good, and despite my use of the word catastrophic in the previous paragraph, notes about the album on the Barefoot Records webpage state “The album is not an invocation of catastrophe, but a longing for a superior and irresistible force that people can’t ignore - a force that focuses on social values, cultural exchange and ecological sustainability.”

 

Despite this persistent optimism of the will, the album is meant to remind listeners “that the world and the structures we are living in are not socially, economically, ecologically or politically sustainable and benefit only a minority of people.”

 

The album warns it is “Always the Others,” the title of the second work on the record. Experts on the history of concentration camps point out that camps functioning in far away times and places are easily labeled as evil, while those erected and running here and now are commonly believed to hold the real bad guys. The individuals held in these places are so quickly othered. And, it is so easy for fascism to take root when its citizens believe it is always the others who face genuine danger. Here in the United States, for instance, by April 2026, 42,000 people with no prior criminal records were being detained in camps throughout the United States. These are camps for the mass detention of civilians, not war-time prisoners, who have not been given due process and were detained on the prejudicial basis of a larger group identity.

Perhaps “Let It Happen At Our Peril” and “Always the Others” call back and ahead philosophically to the album’s fourth track “Zero Point 75.” In the world of optometry, +0.75 Diopters is the lowest level used in a prescription to correct short-sightedness. The short sightedness of humanity may be a reality, but it is still at a correctable state. I don’t think the musicians play programmatically on this album, but I find it fitting that Halym Kim opens this song playing the drums as though it were the ticking of a manual alarm clock. We can only remain short sighted for so much time.

 

So, instead of shrinking away in despair of catastrophe, we can choose now to function like the example set by the musicians on this record: individually contributing to a working group dynamic. Here, this musical dynamic is one where the energy rises and washes over the listener more than any individual solo. The value is located in the spontaneous and present collective, not in a perfected show of musical virtuosity. It is force majeure: a force of such superior power that it is irresistible. And, as displayed on this wonderfully powerful album, it can be used as a force for good.