Latest instalment from FRIM, i.e. the Association for Free Improvised Music in Sweden, is called Split Series Vol. 2 (FRIM RECORDS FRIM6) and showcases two lengthy solo recordings, one from Henrik Olsson and another from Aviva Endean. FRIM seem to have suddenly updated their packaging strategy – after a number of releases with plain well-ordered typography on a white fields, they’ve switched to an-all pink cover with lettering tilted across at a bold angle. There’s even imagery too – it might be a photo of a dented shopping trolley surrounded by an indeterminate black blob. Maybe the early FRIMs were a bit too minimal to stand out on the racks, but at least they had integrity of design – this new departure lacks coherence. The music is good, though. Henrik Olsson is a Swedish player who we have heard a couple of times before in the Muddersten trio, with Martin Taxt and Håvard Volden, who made at least two releases for the Norwegian Sofa label. (He was also in that odd collective Gahlmm whose unusual Break A Leg record still leaves traces of splinters in the flesh of mankind). Well, Olsson can be heard doing it solo on this 17 Nov 2022 recording, made at a lovely second-hand bookshop / venue in Stockholm, where the audience would rather turn a page than scroll on their smartphones, and he’s grinding it up in discreet fashion with his turntables…not for one moment does a vinyl LP pass across his turntables, and instead he’s relying on them for a regular rotary mechanism as he plays his metal bowls, pieces of aluminium, panes of glass, and a trusty bamboo stick. Ay, it’s mostly a subtle percussion-vibronics session hitting the racks, although there may be a lone harmonica or some such making its forlorn wails in the desert. Alsmot a pocket symphony, this is in fact version #26 of Olsson’s composition ‘Common Ground’, which he first realised in 2020, and it’s intended as an experiment in memory. If memory plays a large part in performing music, Olsson puts that theory to the test, and he does it specifically in the context of improvised music. The “human element” – the performer, I suppose – must work hard to retrieve and rebuild memories. Across 33:32 mins, we’re led across a field of mysterious textures and episodes, sometimes quite agitated, sometimes introverted and thoughtful. The grace and delicacy exhibited by Henrik Olsson in his playing is at all times quite remarkable.
Australian player Aviva Endean made a nice record called Moths & Stars for Room 40 in 2023, which was an exciting blend of her clarinet improvisations with vivid recordings of moths doing their fluttering thing with the wings and the antlers. Here she is doing a live version of same – now titled ‘What Calls in The Quiet’ – and she’s supplying electronics, voice, field recordings, and plastic pipes alongside her faithful clarinet. Of course it’s oversimplifying to call it a “live version”. Rather the intention has been to revisit some of her own ideas from Moths & Stars and recast them in a new setting. In all her works, Aviva Endean has exhibited a strong connection with the environment, and she hopes to “foster a deep engagement” such that, through music and sound, the audience can build a better connection with the natural world. We could all benefit from this kind of relationship with our surroundings, for all sorts of reasons – spiritual, ecological, societal. Aviva Endean is one who does this in a very simpatico way, genuinely exploring sounds, without any preconceived ideas of what she might find. Nor does she hector the audience with proscribed, political ideologies about territories. This sumptuous 31:07 set seems to be slightly more “abstract” than the 2023 Moth item, but what it lacks in wing-beating moments it more than compensates with its compelling, immersive, drones of warmth, and suggestions of infinite vistas.
Recorded by John Chantler using 3D printers and health monitor apps, and presented with informative liner notes by Magnus Nygren. From 2nd January 2024.