Part 1
Names: Mats Erlandsson, Gus Loxbo
Nationality: Swedish
Current release: Mats Erlandsson & Gus Loxbo's new album Minnets Långa Kedjor is out September 18th 2026 via Xkatedral.
If you enjoyed this Mats Erlandsson & Gus Loxbo interview and would like to stay up to date with their music, visit Mats Erlandsson's official homepage and Gus Loxbo on Instagram.
When did you first consciously start getting interested in musical improvisation? What was your first improvisation on stage or in the studio and what was the experience like?
GL: I find improvisation as the main role in all music.
It´s a bit tricky to find a starting point where I first became conscious about it. I listened to Swedish rock band Bob Hund and I tried to explain to someone why I liked it so much, I heard playfulness in all layers.
Play is a funny word. In Swedish the word for playing music “spela” is separated from the word for playing “as kids do”, which is called “leka”. I’m kind of jealous of English speakers for having the same word for these very related activities. Playing with your instrument is a very exciting thing to do.
ME: For me, improvisation was always present as I was learning to play music, just due to the nature of the music I was interested in. Still, I didn’t really understand anything about that at the time.
The first time I can remember being exposed to a music where this tool was used to form a full musical statement was a solo guitar performance by Daniel M Karlsson in 1998 or thereabouts where he played what to my ears at the time was a highly abstract type of music at a sort of battle-of-the-bands-show in Örebro.
This initial spark would stay with me until I met Gus Loxbo a few years later. He expanded my musical horizons quite severely and introduced me to ways of playing and thinking about music that went far beyond what I had previously considered possible.
In practice we would spend hours and hours playing in a music room graciously (and most likely secretly) made available to us by our teacher at the time, Daniel Björnmo.
We would play from late afternoon until the alarm on the building would be switched on much later in the night and put down our instruments last minute and run for the door before the alarm would go off. This activity went on for years.
GL: Haha, Yes, I remember all this! It was an important role Daniel played there as our teacher and supporter, he encouraged us in our process, and he gave us a very strong belief in what we were doing. We were so fed up with behaving in the box.
ME: At the same time we started bringing this type of expanded playing to other musical situations (in concert, playing with others etc) which was in itself an extreme learning experience where you’d be exposed to your own temperament and inabilities as well as those of your fellow players and the audiences as well.
Derek Bailey defined improvising as the search for material which is endlessly transformable. What kind of materials have turned out to be particularly transformable and stimulating for you?
GL: I’m very interested in the way sounds mix and become new clusters and colours, a bit like dropping watercolours into water and watching them slowly bleed into one another, and create new shades and colours.
I also find it exciting to try to orchestrate different sounds within the instrument itself, and to find ways of making them resonate simultaneously. There’s something fascinating about discovering how sounds that might seem quite separate can interact and transform into something else entirely.
ME: The materials that I find captivating to engage with are the things that contain a suggestion of where this material wants to go. Ideally the material at hand has a type of agency and gradually unveils itself - the music shows you its form.
In practice this would often mean harmonic structures and progressions which can be seen from many different angles depending on how they are articulated.
Do you feel as though there are at least elements of composition and improvisation which are entirely unique to each? Based on your own work or maybe performances or recordings by other artists, do you feel that there are results which could only have happened through one of them?
ME: Well, in my opinion it is not a binary situation - or rather I should say that they are the same thing, the same process, just operating on different time scales.
The worn out way of putting it would perhaps be to say that the best improvised work sounds composed and the best composed work sounds improvised. Which method is appropriate for a specific situation is dictated by the situation at hand.
In the case of Minnets Långa Kedjor the music on the album was shaped by both methodologies at different times and the resulting sound bears the signature of both the immediate and the overarching.
GL: I agree, it’s very much the same thing, just operating on different time scales. I’m always composing when I play. Let's call it real-time composition — which is a blessing and a curse.
And when I compose, I’m always trying to find my way back to the flow of playing. That, too, is a kind of curse.
When you're improvising, does it actually feel like you're inventing something on the spot – or are you inventively re-arranging patterns from preparations, practise or previous performances? What balance is there between forgetting and remembering in your work?
ME: Nothing is ever created on the spot under any circumstances, in music or otherwise. There is simply no creation - every occurrence in time is a continuation of what has gone before it.
In music this means that you are always relating, mostly subconsciously, to what has happened before in your musical life - all the practice, all the performances and all the preparatory work from your past will inform the present moment which in turn informs the next moment according to the clock frequency of your brain and so on.
GL: I agree from a psychological perspective, but if we put on our physicist’s glasses for a moment, it’s also possible to see everything as a new creation, never before seen or heard. Every note is a completely fresh vibration that has never existed before. That can be an incredibly powerful experience, if you’re in the right mood.
Of course, the vibration has essentially the same shape and sounds more or less identical to the billions of vibrations we have heard before. But this particular one is a new one.
I’m also drawn to the experience of being inside the moment, especially when we improvise in real time.
How does the water taste, how does it feel on my lips when it enters the mouth? How am I shaped by what I’m experiencing? How awake am I to all the subtle changes in what is happening, the way sounds mix, how they resonate with the room and with each other, how one gesture becomes a catalyst for the next, creating chains of events that unfold faster than we can consciously control them?
I think it basically comes down to listening.
Artists from all corners of the musical spectrum, not just “free jazz” have emphasised the importance of freedom in their creativity. What defines freedom for your improvisations?
GL: I think improvising together is very much like having a conversation - a kind of super-conversation where we can all talk at once and listen at the same time. Isn´t that cool?!
Freedom, for me, comes when we feel heard and acknowledged in what we say, when someone else’s idea inspires a new thought in me, and when the recognition of something familiar can also bring a sense of calm. It’s a good conversation: organic, genuine, and open, where everyone can breathe.
And when it feels good to breathe, the air is free.
ME: Freedom to me is a non-issue as it relates to the unfolding of the music either through the means of “improvisation” or “composition” simply because I don’t see myself as responsible for creating anything because there is no creation.
However, I believe that my responsibility towards the music to come is to continue to practice in order to be able to realize that music to the best of my abilities. This requires a discipline which in turn is a form of freedom in itself.
That said, as it relates to the world on a practical level, the gradual oppression of creativity, enslavement of thought and freedom of expression that is being enacted at all levels of society should be destroyed.
Taking your recent projects, releases, and performances as examples, what, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to improvisation?
GL: Since we have played and explored music together for so many years, there was a complete sense of trust between us. It was incredibly exciting to follow the process and see where the music wanted to go.
The same goes for the improvisations that formed the basis of the album. There were some very long takes on a few of the pieces, and I still think it would be interesting to release some of them in their entirety.
There’s something appealing about letting the music unfold without interrupting it — just trusting the process and seeing where it takes you.
ME: The music on Minnets Långa Kedjor first came into being as two days of recording at Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm where Gus and I performed together in the same room with him playing the double bass and me playing electric guitar and electronics.
In those sessions we both brought in small fragments of musical ideas to expand on together which led to us recording long takes in which we were transforming those fragments into long compositions. My first reaction after those initial recording sessions was to quickly edit and mix the existing tracks and present the music in that form however that was not meant to be.
As I was working on those edits suggestions from the music as to which form it should take unfolded before me in a way which was non-negotiable and, instead of being a quick and raw affair, led to an extensive amount of editing, arranging, processing and overdubbing to realize the form inherent but obscured in the original material.
In that respect I owe a debt of gratitude to Gus for his trust in allowing this transformation of our collaborative musical material to take place over the course of the months that this process took.
