Zwerm is an extraordinary guitar quartet. Somewhere between composed music and experimental pop-rock, these musicians have travelled to almost every continent. Over the past ten years, the Belgian quartet has oscillated between pure improvised noise, English Renaissance music and contemporary classical compositions. Their common thread lies not in any particular stylistic direction, but in a shared musical curiosity.
A new Zwerm project always begins with the question: what if...?

Based in Belgium and founded in 2007, Zwerm has collaborated with numerous composers, performers and visual artists-including Fred Frith, Rudy Trouvé, Mauro Pawlowski, Larry Polansky, Eric Thielemans, Yannis Kyriakides, François Sarhan, Stefan Prins and Serge Verstockt-and has never sought a one-sided artistic profile. 

Zwerm is Toon Callier, Johannes Westendorp, Bruno Nelissen and Kobe van Cauwenberghe.

Great Expectations, record.

Zwerm's journey is often defined by the question "What if...?" - like a dart thrown at a musical map, not quite blindly, but naive enough to lead to unexpected ends. "What if we played Renaissance pieces written by John Dowland, but instead of playing the lute, we played these tunes with a Telecaster - and then jammed it through effects pedals and an amplifier?". "What if we connected a hundred guitar pedals and left our guitars at home?". In 2020, our metaphorical dart landed on "What if we tried micro-tonality?".
On continents where Western music theory is less strictly applied, micro-tonality is the rule, and has become the subject of many deep and thoughtful theories. For Zwerm, however, this phenomenon comes in many forms, often surprisingly light. A dilapidated piano that has settled itself into a beautiful micro-tonal tuning, an enthusiastic choral song, a guitar whose three strings are tuned a quarter tone higher, a saz (quarter-tone Turkish lute), an infuriating guitar pedal, ...
"And... what if we worked with a drummer?" Then Karen Willems, drummer extraordinaire, enters the scene. Backstage, producer Rudy Trouvé holds the reins. Mark Dedecker on recording and Joris Calluwaerts on mixing complete the team. 

The result is entitled Great Expectations "released in spring 2021. The more straightforward rockers are tinged with progressive, while the dreamy, psychedelic songs are closer to Richard Youngs: " Heavy Machinery " is somewhere between Captain Beefheart and Richard Wagner, and " On My Way To Aguno ", over a chord progression from an Iranian folk song, turns into a hyper-personal lullaby. Zwerm uses the saz (Turkish lute) and the sinter (Moroccan Gnawa bass instrument) without lapsing into pastiche psychedelia, while exuding the perfumes of the Orient. 

Our Ears Felt Like Canyons, immersive concert

Zwerm is preparing a second edition of "Our Ears Felt Like Canyonsa set of works written for a specific listening environment. Whereas the first edition literally translated Pierre Schaeffer 's concept of "acousmatic listening" by "hiding" the musicians behind a curtain, this second edition will shift the acousmatic "cut" by focusing on the physical, almost palpable presence of sound in the room. Shiva Feshareki's Seismic Wave Ochestra , using an ambisonic configuration, is a highly sensory composition played and experienced through deep listening and physical process, intrinsically connecting to all our senses, our perceptions and how they are interconnected with our experience of the environment and beyond.
In contrast, Stephen O'Malley's new piece Avaeken presents phenomena of precise harmonic beating within the space of the room, allowing rhythm and structure to move through the space, exciting the air and the bodies present in a physical way, turning and moving, with calm, contemplative control and vital energy.

Our Ears Felt Like Canyons I - Transit Festival 2017

Although different in their sound diffusion, both compositions link the listening experience to the sense of touch. Enhanced by an appropriate staging that moves carefully from light to dark, Our Ears Felt Like Canyons II explores different modes of listening, using physical space as an extension of the human body.

Presentation Sandrine Maricot Despretz

Upcoming dates
- 12/2, De Singel, Antwerpen
- 19/03, Klara Festival, Bozar
- 30/04, Festival Aarhus