Singled Out: Freak Kitchen's Teargas Jazz

Teargas Jazz from our album Land of the Freaks might seem as a strange choice for a first single but then again we are not known for walking the obvious path, slightly confused Swedish Vikings as we are. The tune is long, complex at times and based on South Indian, so called carnatic reduction structures. The tonality is from a raga called Pantuvarali, a somewhat harsh mode that I found simply impossible to do anything musical with when first exposed to it. It kept growing on me though and all of a sudden my limited Swedish intellect opened up a bit and a world of beautiful harmony appeared. The Pantuvarali contains the most "blue", dissonant combination of notes one can think of. Yet it is truly lyrical when you get into the nature of it.

During one of our visits to India we ended up in the midst of a public protest that got more and more out of control with Molotov cocktails starting to fly. The provocative drawings in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten of the prophet Muhammad drove Muslims in New Delhi mad. There we were, three Swedish blokes trying to convince the upset we had nothing to do with it. Didn't really work out and we had to throw our pagan butts into a jeep and bloody step on it to get away from the sheer madness.

Later at the concert a riot nearly broke out and we had to stop playing for a while to get the angry, fighting troublemakers out of the venue. I told them they could kill one another in the parking lot but not whilst we play. There were thousands of cool guys and gals around who wanted to rock out and have a good time. It took a while to clear the bad energy in the outdoor arena but when it turned around, it turned around good and we performed one of our most groovy, sweaty gigs ever. Footage of the performance can be seen in the video to Teargas Jazz on YouTube.