Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard's Colliding Bubbles ((surface tension and release) is a string quartet AND a harmonica quartet, meaning that the members of the quartet play string instruments while at the same time playing harmonica.
The Danish newspaper Politiken wrote in their review: "The music soared as minimal distortions expanded it to be a galaxy of sound. The more carefully I listened for the tiny collisions that occurred, the wider the otherwise narrow stream of notes became."
The online magazine Seismograf underlined the effect of the combination of strings and harmonicas: "The trump card is that Løkkegaard has embedded an indeterminacy in the work, an optical illusion [...] You are constantly in doubt as to where the fine sounds come from."
Last but not least, Passive/Aggressive wrote: "As the quartet’s players stretch between their droney melodic lines across instruments, genres and traditions, the question of what is it to be pushed into the established ways of music-making that comprise our world comes into focus. That night, the air fluttered with the beats of subtle timbral and harmonic incoherences that were indeed like experiencing surface tension as a kind of gentle ecstasy."
Colliding Bubbles was premiered in Hamburg 19 January, and will also be performed in Montreal on 29 January.