Artistic freedom? Bah. Let’s discuss exercise yards instead. Let’s discuss chain gangs, canteens, guards. Let’s discuss a cell, with a thick door that is being locked down at 8 pm and then stays locked for 12 hours. Let’s discuss 12 square meters, with a bed, a desk, a TV, a pile of books and not very much more. Let’s discuss the opposite of freedom, both artistic and physical. Let’s discuss a correctional institution.

It could have been an interesting experiment to lock an artistic anarchist and freethinker up under such circumstances for a month. Shit, it could even be the layout for the next reality show on TV. But for Existensminimum it was neither. For Existensminimum, a k a Magnus Henriksson, it was simply doing time, and quite rightfully so.

Anyone who has experienced Existensminimum on stage knows that you can’t get any wilder than Magnus Henriksson. If there are pipes in the ceiling he’s bound to hang from them sooner or later, making guttural sounds as the mike will be stuck in his mouth, until he falls down head first. He throws himself backwards on the stage floor, and if there is an unlucky drum kit in the way it can blame no one but itself. Just as wild was the debut album of Existensminimum, Last night my head tried to explode and I wrote everything down, a couple of years ago. It mixed kraut with electronica, and balalaika orchestras with pop that could be racing with his old employer Moneybrother’s in such a dizzyingly strange mess that most reviewers where lost for words in their search for the essence of Existensminimum.

• I’ve been focusing on the dark stuff, finding an outlet for my energy and my destructive sides. When I’m hurting myself on stage it’s my way of destroying, rebuilding and destroying again in a never-ending circle. Considering that the stage is kind of a protected environment I can act like that without having to take to many risks.

Dressing someone like Existensminimum in a black-and-white striped prison suit, if only for a month, was bound to kill his soul. But instead some kind of self awareness aroused in him, and from that a need to create appeared, in the same imprisoned way as his existence.

• Being locked up made me realize you don’t have to go with every impulse, neither in life nor in music.

What would happen if you built prison walls around the music? What would happen if you decided on allowing some rudimentary elements, but nothing else? A dogma, if you wish? When he got out Magnus Henriksson went straight to his studio in Östergötland, bringing Tobias Fröberg for company. But only after some consideration.

• You know, everyone is biased. I did some stuff on Tobias Fröbergs second album, and figured him to be a down-to-earth kind of person with a narrow taste for music. It turned out to be partly correct, but on the other hand that was exactly the kind of person I needed, and as we got to know each other we found more and more common ground. Like you tend to do.
• My musical vision is very complex, while Tobias focuses on good lyrics and good songs. We were perfect complements to each other, even if it was hard as hell to let myself lose control. My need to control is almost morbid, like a phobia, and the best way to confront that phobia is to bring in an outsider to produce, and let him have the last word on everything.
  So did Tobias Fröberg get to have the last word?
• Yes… well… most of the time.

The result of a set of rules, constraint and a longing for freedom is Ok Boys, an incredibly beautiful electronic pop album stuck in the ambivalence between angstridden subordination and joyful fights for freedom. It will be released on February 25. On parole. (By Patrik Forshage) https://frontl.ink/anagxqb