Let’s visit the world of artist’s residencies and arts festivals, the context in which Lisa Stenberg’s Monument (FYLKINGEN FYCD 1044) came to be…the story involves a number of European countries and cities, including Athens and Osnabruck, as well at Stockholm – the home of the famed Elektromusikstudion EMS.
The record’s notable for featuring the Synthi 100 in Athens and the Synthi 200 in Osnabruck; the former instrument is, ironically for something we still might consider to be situated at the cutting edge of modernity, now at risk of becoming an antique, and we’re told that it hasn’t been in working order for over 20 years. Another “first” achieved by Stenberg is that she took it live on stage in Athens in 2017 – did I mention this whole record is part of a collaborative venture between EMS in Stockholm and the KSYME-CMRC in Greece – and thus she became perhaps the only woman in history to have used this venerable beast in a live situation. In my “rockist” mind I’m trying to reshape this as a real Keith Emerson moment, but that’s probably wildly inappropriate – this Luleå-born (north Sweden) composer has more in common with Eliane Radigue and Pauline Oliveros, a connection I can only make because I’m reading those names from the press release, and though she never collaborated with those goddesses, it’s fair to say she shares common ground with her healing, meditative drones, and her luscious stay-in-one-place chords of warmth and goodness.
I think this item first came out as a cassette in 2018 (on Ambitious Tapes), but now here it is reissued through the good graces of Fylkingen, under whose wing Stenberg finds succour. Although there aren’t any other records to her name as yet, Monument has been performed around Europe in different ways since debut in 2017, sometimes solo or as an audio-visual presentation with the help of Lois Nygren. Plus I see she got a co-production credit for that recent Roberta Settels compilation, suggesting she may have had a hand in its rescue. Monument will delight any listener who likes to dive deep into the amazing analogue-digital hybrid sounds of these Synthi instruments, but it’s also a powerful and dramatic composition, with certain intense and noisy passages evoking a real sense of awe, terror, and other profound emotions. She does with a real kind of dispassionate, detached calm, unleashing furies with a stern and unblinking eye.
Monument is indeed “monumental”, a monolithic landmark sculpture standing proud on the high coastline of contemporary sound art. (July 2023)