Exomusique brings together seven works that Åke Parmerud composed between 2019 and 2025 in his studio in Gothenburg, most of them conceived for 8, 16 or 20 loudspeakers and mixed here in stereo. Several belong to what he calls his series of “unplayable music”: every sound comes from the acoustic world of a real instrument, but the structure of the piece asks that instrument to do things no performer could.

Guitars Unchained reuses material from SubString Bridge, a 1999 piece for guitar and interactive system written for the Swedish virtuoso Mats Bergström, and frees it from any playable technique. In BlowUp II, commissioned by the Orchestre national de Lille for its 2020 online piano festival, a piano piece built on the single note A slowly turns into something impossible to play. Heavy Metal opens with falling metal shrapnel and draws on metal music as much as on the electroacoustic tradition, while Strata moves from orchestral timpani and vibraphone to tablas and gamelan, towards an intense rhythmic ending.

Lounge Lizard is dedicated to the memory of the Mexican composer Javier Álvarez: inspired by his Mambo à la Braque, it lets the Latin groove run where Álvarez kept breaking it. Clouds follows the flow of air through flutes, and String Quartet II returns to his first Stråkkvartett of 1988 with a physical modelling synthesizer, closing on the last ten seconds of the original. String Quartet II won a second prize at the 14th Destellos competition in Mar del Plata, Guitars Unchained an honourable mention at the 15th.

Born in Lidköping in 1953, Åke Parmerud trained as a photographer before studying music in Gothenburg. Since Närheter won first prize at Bourges in 1978 he has received seventeen international awards, two Swedish Grammys and a seat in the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, alongside work for dance, theatre and interactive installations.

CD-R edition in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 25197, 2025.