Aviva Endean / Henrik Olsson – Split Series Vol. 2 CD

Aviva Endean from Australia, Henrik Olsson from Sweden. Two different composers and performers in the global society of improvised music. What connects them is that they shared an evening at the bookstore Rönnells Antikvariat in Stockholm during the Sound of Stockholm festival in 2022. Now they also share this cd, the second volume in FRIM Records ongoing Split Series. They represent two distinguished voices, but there are similarities in that they both, in an improvised manner, take point of departure in music they have composed and performed before. In the case of Aviva Endean, it’s a kind of live reworking of some similar ideas that she used on the album Moths & Stars (Room40, 2022). In the case of Henrik Olsson it’s about memory and how the human factor affects it, when he revreates an improvised composition, Common Ground, he performed two years earlier.

From her debut solo recording for Norwegian label Sofa in 2018, in which she solely improvised on acoustic instruments, Aviva Endean developed new skills when it came to record Moths & Stars. In her own words it was a way of braiding disparate strands of sounds together, to play with the listener’s sense of time and space, bringing our awareness to the tactile qualities of sound by using extremes of close mic techniques, pickups, and the use of recording in vast acoustic spaces. As on Moths & Stars, the composition presented on this cd features instrumental parts interwoven by not only lo-fi electronics and field recordings, but also with voice and of course clarinets. In creating different environments, in which she is in no rush of leaving, this is an evolving composition. The air streams from rotating plastic pipes and the pre-recorded field recordings and folkloristic flute telling a slightly different story from the electronically developed sounds of outer space she is creating with all its comprehensive darkness. Into this sonic environment she brings her clarinets, letting them build new polyphonic surroundings with extended techniques and circular breathing. In thinking of the title Moths & Stars, the composition becomes quite physical in resembling earthly life and spacy emptiness, you could nearly call it a kind of old-time program music. In not only juxtaposing the sound sources, the acoustic with the electronic, the different techniques, Aviva Endean boldly takes the music into different moods and atmospheres. To bring an overtone flute, and even some psychedelic tones, into this electro-acoustic surround is a brave thing. And it turns out very well.

Ever since he was the drummer and percussionist in legendary band gul3 (Yellow3 in English), Henrik Olsson have made great contributions to the field of experimental music in Sweden. As composer and improviser, his curiosity and open-minded musical thought has brought him to a rich world of musical textures, quite often realized electronically through amplified sounds and with silence as a natural part of the musical result.

Even if you will recognize some of this on the composition represented here, the tools he uses are quite different than usual. It all started with an invitation to compose and
perform at the sound/textile exhibition Common Ground in 2020 by Swedish composer
Rosali Grankull and textile artist Hanna Norrna in the town of Strömstad. Inspired by the installation and its way of reaching out in the great hall of Lokstallet, Olsson soon felt a need
to leave his comfort zone and find new tools to elaborate with.
To balance the fragility and airiness he experienced in the installation of Grankull and Norrnas, Olsson decided to use acoustic sound sources as components for his own compositions. And with two self-made turntables and a battery of different objects he performed an acoustic DJ-set, working with the sounds of his own creation and the sounds from the existing sound installation, creating a music box of sorts. The “records”
were as different as glass, a small drum or metal bowls, and working as a the “pick-up” was everything from a rubber ball to a bamboo stick or a sheet of aluminum.
A few days after the performance Olsson decided to record the solo composition, performed now out of his memory. And because of the idle situation of the Corona pandemic, he had plenty of time to continue working with this single composition. The result became 25 different recordings – Common Ground #1–25 – which later was exhibited and released as 25 unique pieces of art.
– Magnus Nygren