Arts Extract Podcast, 2014

[Album Review]  “Madison-based multi-instrumentalist Brian Grimm specializes in playing the guqin and guzheng, Chinese zithers that sometimes run as large as a small canoe. He’s also a classically trained cellist and, under the name Brain Grimmer, produces adept and twisted instrumental hip-hop. In performances with Julian Lynch’s band and various jazz and improvisational groups around town, Grimm draws on both formal music studies and avant-garde extremes. …His new album, ‘The Ideating Knell,’ plies his expertise with Chinese stringed instruments into something resembling abstract electronic music. …Where most of us would be intimidated to touch one of these instruments, Grimm subjects them to alternate tunings, digital processing, and tools including mate straws and, according to his liner notes, “broken teaware.” Amid all the outlandish instrument-hacking, most of the tracks retain a certain tuneful minimalism, perhaps best demonstrated on ‘Flock Migrates Over The Pines’.”