At the foot of a face

Improvising bassist, Joel Grip, makes music at the countenance of the other.
Anchored to a spontaneously fermented musical approach, his music reverberates and transforms within a collective body of timing and sound. Joel Grip practice improvising, as a way to learn and develop a forthright sound, and embrace its reactiveness, rapidity, and startling
character with the aim of pushing music to intense, ecstatic and transformative levels. His vivid connection to the history of Afro-American musics (its origins and its avant-gardes on both sides of the Atlantic) has an outlet in celebratory, heavy and risky musical performances. An assumably all encompassing approach to handcraft music making, and the urge of making it publicly available – thus put in ceremonial function in terms of familiar and radical rooms for regular meetings of listeners and creators – have given Joel Grip a vital role in, above all, Central and Northern Europe. He has lived and worked in Stockholm, Baltimore, Paris and Berlin, and is the co-founder of artist run organisations such as Hagenfesten (Dala-Floda), Umlaut Records (Paris, Berlin, Stockholm), Au Topsi Pohl (Berlin), Umlicht Films (France, Sweden), Public Health Music (Ukraine, Sweden), and Curved Pitch.


At the moment he is active as a soloist and in the groups [ahmed], _xamul X, Oùat, Vaka, [ism], Klub Demboh, Sapat, Herr Borelgrip and a frequent collaborator with Sven-Åke Johansson (Stumps, Neuköllner Modelle, Storky Jazz, Erinnerung an Litfass, In Early November).


Joel Grip also make work as a visual artist with a preference of analogue film, drawing (graphite, charcoal) and oil painting. He has a studio and atelier in Berlin (Etwas von Anders) from which much of his recent activities emanate.


As a musician and/or producer he participates in about fifty record releases from labels Umlaut Records, Fönstret, Astral Spirits, OTOroku, Corbett vs Dempsey, Topsi Series, 577 Records, Bison, Rune Grammofon, Olof Bright, A Cheeseboard Production, Two Nineteen Records...

Discography: 

 

2024


2023


2022


2021


2020


2019


2018


2017


2016


2015


2014


2013


2012


2011


2010


2009


2008


2007


2006


2005


2004

  • Shelly Blake Music,Apache, what apocrypha have you?(Shelly Blake Music)


2003

  • Kloster,Vol. 1. (Mad Poodle Records, CD-r 002)


2002

  • Kloster,You Ain’t Nothing But Kloster, (Mad Poodle Records, CD-r 001, 2002)


2001

  • The Stockholm Klezmer Quintet, (Umpa Umpa Records, CD-r 001)
  • The Grip, (Grip Musik, CD-r 001)



Films


Långsamhetens Lov | DV | 50 min | Sven-Åke Johansson & Joel Grip | 2022 (filmed in 2017)


Smalltalk über Zeit | DV | 17 min | Topsi Series | Part 9 of When Will Never Meet


Nyårsfesten | Fic/Doc | S8 | 80 min | Umlicht 2018 | w/ Mauricio Hernández, Leïla Colin-Navaï, Erik Viklund, Lisa Grip and Franziska Hoffmann


Burning Bright| Doc | 16 mm | 52 min | Umlicht 2014 | w/ Mauricio Hernández


Det Snöar om Björken| Fic/Doc | S8 | 80 min | Umlicht 2014 | w/ Mauricio Hernández


Buktalaren| Fic/Exp | S8 | 9 min | Umlicht 2013


Gloende Örats Sång| Exp | S8 | 2 min | 2012


Mellanrum| Doc/Exp | dv | 25 min | 2011


Valerik 0.9s| Exp/Doc | dv | 17 min | Public Health Music 2008


The United Sounds of America | Exp/Doc | dv | 5x5 min | 2005



Printed words and drawings


2023 Fönstret, Att kasta ankare med Tristan Honsinger


2021 Wander & Wonder, Tristan Honsinger illustrated by Joel Grip, Topsi Series, 2021


2019 Moustache and Marvelous, Motvind Förlag, Oslo 2019


2018 Theoral no 14, Tristan Honsinger & Joel Grip, Wien 2018


2017 Room 1, Ornette Coleman, Drawings and texts on David Izenson, Experimental library, London 2017


2015 Materien gör Motstånd, Umdicht


2014 Lösa Blad no 1, Umdicht


2013 Gloende Örats Sång, Les Citadelles 18/2013


Joel Grip, standing on Alexander Markvart's shoulders during a Klub Demboh performance 2023. Photo by Carina Khorkhordina

Joel Grip, standing in front of a grey wall 2024. Photo by Carina Khorkhordina