ABSOLUT
We live in a world right now where there are a lot of blowhards. Whether it’s a president or a prime minister, a dictator, a TV commentator or any random person giving themselves a sense of importance because they’re sitting anonymously behind a computer, there’s a lot of hot air and bullshit we’re subjected to on a daily basis. People are trolling each other, bullying, attacking and killing – all the while telling us it’s not happening the way we see it.

When I wrote ABSOLUT’s main theme I wanted to duplicate the wah-wah-wah of people talking nonsense, people who are filled with self-importance even though they have nothing intelligent to say. Their words have no value, and to me it sounds like wah-wah—wah wah-wah-wah-wah-wah. Like a puppet whose wooden mouth is flapping as somebody else pulls the strings.

Yet, we wake up. We eat breakfast. Kiss somebody goodbye. We commute to work. Chat with our co-workers, check email. We hang onto routines for dear life, as if they’re going to save us.

Politics is a complete sh-t-show, yet we’re still going along as if nothing is happening. We completely ignore it. We keep doing what we do.

The hustle and bustle of our immediate environments helps keep us blinded. It’s always there beneath the surface - that bubbling up of everything we don’t want to happen. Every now and then we catch a glimpse of it, but it’s too scary. We don’t want to confront it. We don’t want to see all the monsters under our own beds, so we pretend they don’t exist. We pretend that, as if by magic, it will all eventually be normal again.

Like little children playing in the middle of a disaster area, we need to disconnect. When the musicians solo, it’s like we’re at a hip club. People are trying to be light-hearted, to live and feel joy, and for a few moments, we do.

Many of my friends are in pain and they don’t know why. They suffer from depression, anxiety, addiction, general feelings of despair. Whether they have strong religious beliefs or not, they still feel a sense of loss. Like many people of my generation, I worry about the future. Some friends get engaged or married, have children, and I wonder about what kind of future those little children will have. I know I would not want a child of mine to suffer through wars, drought, famine, totalitarianism, living in constant fear and upheaval.

And yet I’m still waking up every day, composing music, playing gigs, making recordings. I'm an optimistic person, but even I can't imagine how we will repair the damage that is being done to the world and to each other.

In Swedish – I was born in the US but raised in Stockholm – ABSOLUT has many definitions. ABSOLUT can refer to the strength of a star’s light. It can mean the lowest temperature that can be reached. It can mean the highest amount of something. ABSOLUT can refer to the precise recognition of a sound or tone aka perfect pitch. An ABSOLUT monarchy with total rule. It can refer to a philosophical teaching about the nature of objective truth. It can also refer to abstaining from alcohol or other substance.

We can’t let all the situations that are destroying us reach the lowest point, the point of no return. We must remember we are made from stardust and embody within us that power that we can use for the greater good. Together we can reach new heights of love, brotherhood and compassion. Let’s pay attention and listen to what’s truly happening, what’s truly being said. Let’s be objective about how our actions affect others, not just ourselves. If you cut off a finger, the entire body feels the loss. Let’s deal directly with the problems, so that we don’t abuse substances to try to forget.

ABOUT MAX HOLM
Max is the 2019 Downbeat Magazine Outstanding Jazz Piano Performance winner. He's a graduate of the Berklee College of Music, where he was honored as one of the few presidential scholars. In 2018 he received a rare honorable mention from the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition, winning in the jazz genre, but coming in second in the combined classical, contemporary and jazz piano categories to a graduate student from Juilliard. In 2016 he was featured on 8 out 10 tunes on the NIMA Jazz Album of the year, The Inside of the Outside, with multi-Grammy Award winners Jeff Coffin (Dave Matthews Band), Branford Marsalis, Victor Wooten, Rashawn Ross and Roy "Futureman" Wooten, among others. Max was a Brubeck Fellow at the Dave Brubeck Institute. He has played hundreds of gigs at many well-known venues in the US and Europe. Most recently he headlined the Formentera Jazz Festival and The Fringe Festival of Jazz L'Estartit in Girona, Spain.

At the age of 14 Max had a near death experience, collapsing after losing half his blood. 7 blood transfusions from 7 strangers saved him. He gave a TED talk about how the blood transfusion/near death experience changed his personality and turned him into a jazz musician.