Maria W Horn & Mats Erlandsson

Residency report
Our residency project was formulated as a means to deepen our musical practices in an environment conducive to developing ideas and allowing for focused work over an extended period of time. As we had spent a large portion of our lives producing work with clearly defined boundaries and performing a substantial amount of shows with several projects we felt the need to be temporarily free from the constraints of deadlines, extensive traveling and self-promotion that has become part of our daily lives as composers and musicians.

During our stay at La Becque we worked on three parallel areas of interest resulting in a body of material to be shaped into tangible works as well as a deepening and expansion of our individual and collaborative themes and ideas. We divided our time between developing and recording new music on the grand organ in the La Tour-de-Peilz Temple, writing music in an electro-acoustic duo setting which was recorded in the sound studio at La Becque as well as presented as a concert film made in the residency’s garden, and deepening our understanding of tuning and temperament by regular nightly singing practice.

La Becque’s environment and facilities proved ideal and enabled us to move eamlessly between different projects, as well as individual and collaborative work. In practice, the work created here will gradually come into the light throughout the coming years, and the beauty of the experience itself will remain crystallized forever in our hearts. — Maria W Horn & Mats Erlandsson

Biography
The ongoing collaboration between Stockholm-based Swedish artists Maria W Horn (b. 1989) and Mats Erlandsson (b. 1985) is an ever-changing, long-term artistic exchange which draws on their individual practices as composers, to form a shared room in which synthesized analog, acoustic and digital sound, field-recordings, and non-normative harmonic structures are woven together to form a unique independent expression. Their work takes the form of live electronic concert performances, electroacoustic concert pieces, recorded albums, and four-handed pipe organ performances augmented by live electronic processing. The pair share an interest in exploring historical psychological imprints imparted on spaces and objects by the means of field-recording and sustained synthesized sound.

Alongside their collaborative work, Maria W Horn and Mats Erlandsson both have individual musical careers and co-run the record label XKatedral together with former resident Kali Malone, Daniel M Karlsson, and Sara Fors.