Sounds only

Woche 19-24 / 05.05. - 15.06.08

Swedish Focus II
curated by Isabel Thomson and Johannes S. Sistermanns
Electroacoustic Music from Sweden

01. Love Mangs / Viken / 2005 / 14:34
02. Linus Gabrielsson / Something beyond everything that words cannot describe / 08:44
03. Girilal Baars/ In the context of eternity / 2007 / 09:47
04. Pär Johansson/ The Colour out of Space / 2002 / 07:18
05. Andrea Neumann / Struggling with Bittman / 2007 / 10:58
06. Jens Hedman / Waterfields / 2007 / 10:10
07. Malin Bång/ Twilight Collider / 2004 / 09:05
08. Iwo Myrin / Nocturnal Hunt / 2007 / 06:33
09. Johan Boberg / Subways / 2007 / 10:57
10. Jan Liljekvist / Adagio from Eight times falling / 01:37
11. Lise-Lotte Norelius / RP-Bopp / 05:53
12. Mattias Petersson / Från Mimer from Mimer / 02:45
13. Rolf Enström / Up from Quarks / 13:26

Love Mangs / Viken / 2005 / 14:34
Solopiece for guitar, banjo and computer
Commisioned by the Swedish arts council for Stefan Östersjö
The bay (viken in Swedish). This is where it all begins. The birthplace of innumerable fish, sunrises and dreams. The safe haven and starting point for expeditions further and further out among the islands on the raft we built. To new shores balancing on the boundaries of soil, sea and heavens. Each islet a new microcosm of personality and memories to explore. Always to return to the bay. Fishing for pikes at dawn with a morning breeze whispering through the reed. Carried by the thin surface, watching the silver shoals below. At dusk lying in the tent listening to the stock doves call. There under the radiant sky, behind the drifting haze - the silent black lake that calls for ports unknown.
Viken was initiated as a collaboration between me as a composer and the acclaimed Swedish guitarist Stefan Östersjö, commissioned by the Swedish arts council. The idea was a rich sounding live-piece where the soloist would be fairly free to shape the breath of the piece within the framework of the form. It was also to hold improvised parts and preferably no pre-recorded soundfiles. Some guitar parts though would be recorded during performance to return in the background a few minutes later. It's a good thing to work together with a soloist whose skill and ingenuity bring new opportunities to the composition. It is for example highly unlikely that I as a music maker and hobby-guitarist would have come up with the excellent idea to use e-bow on a banjo for one specific treatment in the patch. In the end we had to give up on the ascetic approach and due to limitations of computational power, for the good of the piece, add some soundfiles.
Love Mangs: Sound artist who was born in Stockholm in 1966. The major part of my work has focused on electroacoustic music. It has also involved sound installations and music for instrument and computer. In my artistic motifs I often approach nature, as an inspiration of course but also as a model for music. In the woods you never know what sound will come next, yet you are seldom surprised. There is an ever-changing flow of new combinations within a set framework - chance within a meaningful form. Despite the lack of novelty you don't get bored. You can also sense relations between different sound-events. Very often these relations are imaginary - the sounds seem to hook on to each other but it's only your own creativity trying to bring meaning to chance. If I have an artistic ideal it would be - to paraphrase Émile Zola - nature seen through a temperament.
Contact address: Mossv. 20, S-745 42 Enköping, Sweden // Tel: +46 171 240 50, +46 73 801 58 00 // e-mail: love.mangs@glocalnet.net

Linus Gabrielsson / Something beyond everything that words cannot describe / 08:44
Linus Gabrielsson was born in Stockholm in 1980. Composer, "Lebemann", linguist, poker player, reductionist, poet, tester of medicine, translator, cyclist, psychonaut, actor, determinist, percussionist, liar and friend. He hopes to add wine connoisseur, extreme sportsman and scientific theoretician to the list within the near future. He studied percussion at musical high school and went on to University to study linguistics. Since the turn of the century he has been working with sound design and made music for short films and improvisational theatre, besides spending time on free musical creation within different electronic genres. He seldom dances quickstep, but always declares his income on time.

Girilal Baars/ In the context of eternity / 2007 / 09:47
In the Context of Eternity was commissioned for an exhibition concerned with buildings. This piece is a reflection on how buildings are mankind's challenge to Time. It is also constructed much the same way that we build: small identical pieces are transformed into something bigger, of a different nature, often disguising the original shapes.
Girilal Baars is a composer, singer and musician born in Moscow of Dutch and Indian origin and now living in Sweden. GB's involvement with electro-acoustic music began in the late 90's when he purchased a theremin. GB has worked for several years with the Finnish dancer and choreographer Mikko Kallinen composing abstract electroacoustic pieces. Their latest collaboration is Choreo/Cut?/Graphic (2007), a choreographic video game. The live side of electro-acoustic music has long been an interest, often in collaboration with other musicians, using theremin, live-looping and voice. In this context GB has performed in Russia, Finland and Sweden. GB's latest effort in this context is a solo performance entitled Litanies in Zero Kelvin. It is an attempt to meld the aesthetics and methods of electronic music with old traditional songs, largely from Russia. Vocal music from various ethnic traditions, being the other field of music pursued by GB.

Pär Johansson/ The Colour out of Space / 2002 / 07:18
"West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentle slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs."
"The Outsider", "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Colour out of Space" are loosely modelled on the short stories by Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), the U.S. American author of horror and science fiction stories and one of Western literature's most prolific epistolarians. His vast correspondence consists of more than 100,000 letters to friends and colleagues. Some 20,000 of these have been preserved and provide a unique insight into his personality, authorship and aesthetic stance, his transformation from political conservative to Roosevelt supporter and aristocratic socialist as well as his fondness for cats. The three pieces form a suite, "Tombeau de Lovecraft", that, besides being based on ideas and plot elements from the Lovecraft stories, also is a kind of musical self-portrait. There is a tint of self-irony, perhaps most noticeable in The Outsider - the piece which has deviated the most from Lovecraft's short story. The narrative structures of the pieces are adapted from the stories, but more important is the overall mood, e. g., in At the Mountains of Madness the melancholy portrayal of the cold, vast beauty of the Antarctic.
Pär Johansson's biography: I was born in Södertälje, Sweden in 1972 and besides my M.A. in library and information science and M.Sc. in computer engineering, I have studied music, acoustics and Chinese language and culture. I was a student of electroacoustic composition at EMS in 1995-97 for Anders Blomqvist, Lars-Gunnar Bodin, Andreas Hedman, Jens Hedman, Erik Mikael Karlsson and Peter Lundén. Since then I have also worked there as an administrative assistant, librarian and lecturer in acoustics and sound synthesis. My music is narrative, sometimes containing recognisable sounds, but it is not conventional programme music, though the source of inspiration often is literary or philosophical. Nor is it conceptual sound art since the aesthetic aspects of a piece are just as important to me as the underlying ideas. The intention is that it should be possible to listen to the music without any background knowledge. I want to avoid an overly intellectual approach to music, while not abandoning the formal stringency typical of Western art music, and strive for an abstract, emotional narrative not unlike that of a Chopin ballade. My works contain several parallel layers in counterpoint - a trait borrowed from ancient art music. This method of working in layers has led me to compose almost exclusively multi-channel works.

Andrea Neumann / Struggling with Bittman / 2007 / 10:58
"Struggling with Bittman" was recorded during a concert in Studio 1 at EMS in April 2004. Andrea Neumann was then a guest composer for a period of time here at EMS (Electroacoustic Music in Sweden).
Andrea Neumann, born 1968 in Freiburg, grew up in Hamburg. Piano lessons since 1974. Studied piano at "Hochschule der Künste" in Berlin. Since 1996 primarily active as improviser and composer in the areas of experimental and new music. In the process of exploring the piano for new sound possibilities, she has reduced the instrument to strings, resonance board and metal frame. With the help of electronics to manipulate and amplify the sounds (sometimes to make parts of the sound audible which are inaudible without amplification), she has developed numerous new playing techniques, sounds, and ways of preparing the dismantled instrument. Because the original inside piano is very heavy, a piano builder (Bernd Bittmann, Berlin) constructed a new and lighter one for her. She has worked intensively in the crossover area between composition and improvisation, and in the field between electronic and handmade sounds, with Berlin musicians such as Annette Krebs, Ignaz Schick, Axel Dörner, Robin Hayward and Burkhard Beins. She has composed for inside piano for interdisciplinary projects including film, dance, performance, etc.

Jens Hedman / Waterfields / 2007 / 10:10
During the winter of 2006- 07 I was travelling about for some months in southeast Asia. And living close to the sea inspired me to explore its inner sonic potentialities. For six weeks I stayed on the island Kho Lanta in southern Thailand, on a coast afflicted by the tsunami in 2004, and where the impact of its devastation could still be seen here and there. Sound material has also been recorded and processed in Cambodia and Vietnam. The magnificent roaring of the sea and its inner gestures formed a base for the working process with the sound material. From the various sounds created during my trip I then completed the piece in studio Circé at IMEB in Bourges, France. Work comisioned by and realized in the Studios of the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges / IMEB.
Jens Hedman composes both instrumental and electro-acoustic music. Hedmans music is frequently performed during festivals and in radio broadcasts through the world. His music has also been awarded several international prizes and awards. Hedman's piece Relief recived 2004 an Euphonies d'Or at Concours Internationaux de Musique et d'Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges. Early on he began working with combinations of electroacoustic music and other art forms such as film, poetry and scenography, but lately has devoted himself to pure tape music or its combination with live instruments. He studied composition at the Royal Academie of Music in Stockholm with, among others, Per Lindgren and Bill Brunson.

Malin Bång/ Twilight Collider for flute and live electronics / 2004 / 09:05
If you have some boiling water and put cold water or ice into it, the boiling water calms down, but you haven't totally extinguished the waters potential to boil. The starting point for this piece was different aspects of dualism, both as a source of inspiration but also in a musical sence; the flute towards the live electronics; the direct flute sounds and the sounds through the inside microphone; the flute and the bass flute; the gurgling and growling sounds towards the soft and fragile sounds.
Malin Bång (1974) lives in Stockholm where she is composer in residence for the ensemble "Curious Chamber Players". She has done several musical collaborations in Norway during the past years; "när korpen vitnar" for hardingfela performed by Liv Merete Kroken, the CD production Neophyte (Kirkelig Kulturverksted), "Murmurs" premiered by Vestre Aker Musikkorps and the monologue "Rebekkas saga" in Nationaltheatret.

Iwo Myrin / Nocturnal Hunt / 2007 / 06:33
The source material for the piece Nocturnal Hunt is ultrasonic recordings of bats, generated from their larynges through their open mouths to help them echolocate insects during their nocturnal hunts. These sounds, beyond the range of the human ear, were recorded on 23-24 June 2007 around the Katarina Church in Stockholm which has a history of being burned down twice and of several witch-trials. In the western culture bats symbolize ghosts, death and disease, though in other places, in Eastern Asia for example, the bat is a symbol of longevity and happiness. The sounds have been manipulated in the musique concrète-tradition using analogue magnetic tape. The piece is a part of the exhibition/LP Vodou that has been shown in 0045 in Oslo and Galleri 54 in Göteborg so far. The piece is a part of the exhibition/LP Vodou, curated by Lina Selander and Marianne Zamecznik, that has been shown in 0045 in Oslo and Galleri 54 in Göteborg so far.
Iwo Myrin (1964) is an artist/composer living and working in Stockholm. He is also a member of the experimental rock group En halvkokt i folie.

Johan Boberg / Subways / 2007 / 10:57
Like many of my other pieces Subways is an invisible "image" in sound. Subways in particular is weak in progression of the form but vivid in the details. The subject is the veins of the modern city, the sewers and the rails. The city as an organism, travels beneath its skin.
Johan Boberg is a composer primarily in the field of electronic music and sound art. He is also working actively as a live-electronics performer, solo as well as in different constellations with other musicians.

Jan Liljekvist / Adagio from Eight times falling / 01:37
Adagio is an exerpt from a longer piece featured on a CD called Eight times falling, issued by EMS in 2001.
Jan Liljekvist was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1962. Started out learning to play woodwind instruments (flute, clarinet, saxophone) at an early age. After the first years of education, playing in big bands, marching bands, chamber and symphony orchestras, he went into the rock scene. Was during the 80´s busy making records and touring in Sweden and Europe, singing and playing the guitar with the garage-rock group THE SHOUTLESS. Moved in the 90´s on to the violin and formed the group TVÅ FISK OCH EN FLÄSK. They have made two CDs playing medieval swedish folkmusic mixed with own compositions. Plays since 1998 the violin with the black-metal group MÅNEGARM which up to now has made six records for Displeased Records (Holland). Plays the violin and live-electronics in electro/improvisation-group BUGMAN (formed in the early 90´s as PLANLOS IRR). Jan Liljekvist studied electro-acoustic composition for Lars-Gunnar Bodin, Rolf Enström, Anders Blomkvist and Erik Mikael Karlsson at the EMS studio in Stockholm during the years 1996-2000. Member of the Society of Swedish Composers (FST) since 2003.

Lise-Lotte Norelius / RP-Bopp / 05:53
RP Bopp is from a CD called Gruvfruns goda råd that was issued in 2004.
Lise-Lotte Norelius was born in 1961. She studied percussion and electroacoustic music at the Stockholm Royal College University for Bill Brunson, Fredrik Hedelin, Örjan Sandred, Gunnar Valkare, Bengt Berger, to name but a few. Since the 80's she has performed as a musician and a composer and has received numerous commissions.

Mattias Petersson / Från Mimer from Mimer / 02:45
My recent work is oriented towards live-electronics, improvisation and live-performance, but i also work with multichannel acousmatic music, acoustic instruments and sound installations. I perform live as solo artist (sometimes with the alias .emp) as well as in different constellations.
Mattias Petersson: I was born 1972 on an island in the south-east of Sweden. My musical career began with piano studies but nowadays I work as a composer and play electronic instruments. I work mostly in the area of experimental electronic music and sound art, but have also been involved in more pop-like projects as arranger, composer, producer and musician.

Rolf Enström / Up from Quarks / 13:26
Rolf Enström can look back over twenty odd years as a composer. There are about 25 works on his list - thouroughly composed pieces of great artistic quality. Several of his pieces have become "classics" and are much appreciated repertoire pieces in Sweden as well as abroad., e.g. "Directions" (1979), Slutförbannelser (1981), Tjidtjag och Tjidtjaggaise (1987) which was awarded the "Prix Italia" the same year, the bildspiel "Io" (1996) and "Rama" (1998) to name but a few. Rolf Enström is a composer who is constantly looking for new paths and modes of expression and this has often led him to combine music with other art forms, above all pictorial art and literature. The bildspiels that he has made together with Thomas Hellsing have become a much appreciated genre in themselves. Rolf Enström is a dramatic composer who likes to work with strong contrasts. The sudden burst followed by the pause/silence are important elements in his music. More often than not, the music can be brutal and violent, but sometimes you also find a little joke, smuggled in, in the shape of a small unexpected sound. Enström also has a well-developed feeling for form in his compositions.

Hier werden Produktionen aus Archiven der Elektroakustischen Musik, wie z.B. dem Archiv der DEGEM oder dem IDEAMA- und dem DEGEM-Archiv des ZKM, dem Archiv des elektronischen Studios der TU Berlin sowie anderen internationalen Archiven und Dokumentationen elektroakustischer Kunst unter verschiedenen Aspekten präsentiert.