Room40 announces Headwater, a new album by Finnish/Australian double bassist, vocalist and composer Helen Svoboda, arriving June 26th. To mark the announcement, Svoboda has shared the video for album opener If.
The distinctive sonic world of Headwater weaves sixteen threads — or ‘earworms’ — built around two double basses, two voices and electronics, heard as singular and combinatory bodies of material. The album forms an abstracted picture of self, rooted in a devolved song form. It can be experienced as a tapestry that blurs the edges of identity; strange, beautiful, evaporative and fluid, like memory itself.
On If, Svoboda says: “‘If’ explores a dream shaped by constant interruptions. The sleeper is caught in a series of jolts, driven by the fear of losing precious hours of consciousness within a fleeting human life. Each disturbance prevents a descent into deeper sleep, yet the body never fully awakes.
“The video, directed and filmed by Angus Kirby, captures this state between rest and recurring subconscious thoughts. We filmed this around the corner from my house in Melbourne during, and after, a stunning summer sunset.”
Songs are glued together by extended instrumental practice, improvisation and strands of Svoboda’s cultural heritage. Born in Finland and raised in Australia since the age of five, Svoboda delves into her Nordic background largely through the album’s vocal work, which carries echoes of Finnish folk harmony and traces of invented “Finnish” words, explored in collaboration with vocalist Selma Savolainen. Svoboda notes that she does not seek to emulate or replicate this style of music, but has taken and nurtured the seeds of its influence on her musical language into something deeply personal and intuitive.
The instrumental pieces reveal an expanded approach to the melodic and textural qualities of the double bass. Svoboda’s fascination with timbre is explored with collaborator Jacques Emery through the interplay of two basses and Tilman Robinson’s electronics, extending traditional understandings of how the double bass might operate in a chamber context. The ensemble features Helen Svoboda (double bass, voice, composition) with Jacques Emery (double bass), Selma Savolainen (voice) and Tilman Robinson (electronics, production).