KYLE GRIMM, forever eve

A double bass can rumble like an earthquake, whisper like a memory, scrape against the edges of consciousness, or suddenly erupt with the force of a jazz orchestra. On forever eve, Kyle Grimm seems determined to discover just how far he can push those possibilities before the instrument becomes something almost unrecognizable. Across five works for double bass and electronics, Grimm turns wood, strings, bow, fingers, sampled sound, looping, delay and electronic processing into an offbeat, immersive landscape where beauty and disturbance continually collide. The result is challenging, hypnotic and frequently mind-bending—but underneath all the sonic experimentation lies something remarkably human: a musician rediscovering the performer inside himself.

The album’s title captures that sense of anticipation. “Forever eve” suggests the perpetual moment before something happens, a threshold suspended between what has already occurred and what comes next. Grimm’s own artistic awakening began in March 2023, when pianist and composer Aaron Wyanski invited him to perform a recital of double bass and electronics. Having shifted much of his attention toward composition, Grimm had allowed performing to become an occasional pursuit. The concert reminded him that performance was not simply something he engaged in; it was an essential part of who he was as an artist. forever eve grew from that realization and from his desire to perform alongside collaborators whose musical imaginations could challenge his own.

The opening track, Wyanski’s “Twist, Then Pull,” immediately throws the listener into the deep end. Explosive bursts crack through the opening like echoing hockey pucks slammed against a wall, thunderbolts or fragments of some industrial machine coming apart. Yet those startling sounds have a fascinating pedigree: the fixed-media portion draws heavily from recordings of jazz giants Max Roach and Jimmy Garrison, with additional chord fragments from Duke Ellington. Against this percussive chaos, Grimm’s bass emerges with dark bowed tones, high trance-like phrases and increasingly adventurous plucking.

The effect feels like an avant-garde jazz conversation occurring inside an industrial storm. Bass figures, booming drum fills and electronically manipulated fragments collide, separate and return. A soulful melodic line occasionally rises above the mayhem, only to be swallowed by another enormous rhythmic eruption. Wyanski’s “fugue of pulses” becomes an ingenious meeting point between jazz history and contemporary electroacoustic experimentation, while Grimm gives the piece its restless physical presence.

“Serendipitous II,” Grimm’s own composition, ventures even deeper into uncertainty. Wind-like ambience introduces a shadowy, brooding bass landscape, with ominous bowed tones, strange high squeaks and electronic textures hovering around the instrument. The work belongs to Grimm’s continuing exploration of randomness, predictability and feedback: electronics capture portions of his live playing, reorder them and effectively send a transformed version of his musical past back into the present.

That concept becomes audible as the piece unfolds. A low bowed growl may be answered by an impossibly high tone; resonant melodic playing gives way to distorted string articulations, breathy bowing and disembodied electronic sounds. At moments the music seems to search upward from an ominous subterranean world, reaching for light without ever completely escaping the somberness. Grimm’s virtuosity matters less as a display of technique than as a means of navigating this unstable sonic environment.

Maria Kaoutzani’s “All About It” initially feels almost ritualistic, built from stark bass hits and drumstick-like percussion. Slowly, however, its ominous energy begins to move. A midrange melody surfaces, the bow becomes increasingly animated, and a chugging rhythmic current develops underneath the bass. What begins as sparse and forbidding gradually transforms into something surprisingly buoyant, almost dance-like. The electronics subtly amplify the instrument before assuming a more independent trajectory, while the fully notated structure eventually gives way to improvisation.

Grimm’s title piece, “forever eve,” may be the album’s most literal demonstration of his philosophy. Every electronic sound originates from his double bass in real time. Reverse delays turn the instrument’s attacks and decays backward, while shimmer reverbs stretch its tones into luminous upper registers. Gentle bass tones initially float against a soft electronic haze. Gradually the environment thickens: feedback curls around the bass, percussive gestures accelerate and the soundscape seems to expand outward into some vast celestial chamber.

The bass remains the human anchor amid all that processing. At points the combination suggests a black hole swallowing sound; elsewhere, the electronics resemble wind rushing through outer space or even a fleeting celestial choir. The tension comes from the bass seemingly chasing its own sonic shadow—each gesture generates an electronic afterimage that trails behind it.

The album closes with Ken Steen’s “…and in what flows between them,” an in memoriam work honoring bassist Robert Black. Its heavy resonant drone establishes an almost subterranean atmosphere, gradually joined by increasingly adventurous bowing and looping textures. Grimm’s playing moves from low, heavy resonance toward higher melodic fragments, while electronically treated sounds hover like distant echoes. The music becomes simultaneously intimate and enormous, a conversation between memory and presence.

That sense of conversation ultimately defines forever eve. Grimm is not using electronics simply to decorate the double bass. He treats technology as another performer—sometimes a partner, sometimes a reflection, sometimes an unsettling distortion of what he has just played. His background as both composer and bassist makes the distinction between writing and performing especially fluid. The instrument becomes source material, orchestra, percussion section, sound generator and expressive voice.

forever eve will not necessarily make every listener comfortable. Its fascination lies partly in its refusal to settle into a predictable contemporary-classical vocabulary. Moments of gorgeous lyricism can suddenly give way to abrasive textures; meditative passages can mutate into rhythmic explosions; a single bass note can become the seed of an entire cinematic electronic landscape. Grimm embraces the gritty and the beautiful, the controlled and the accidental, the familiar and the bizarre.

Most importantly, the album feels like the document of an artist stepping back onto a stage he never really left. forever eve looks toward the future while carrying echoes of jazz, memory, friendship and the physicality of one extraordinary instrument. It is music suspended on the threshold—restless, searching and emphatically alive.