Visby International Composers Centre and EMS Sweden

Photo of the Bass Hang performance by Miller Sargeant.

The set up for Bass Hang, in Fylkingen, Stockholm.

My favourite module on the Buchla 200: the 259 Oscillator.

At the Bergman Centre on Fårö Island, off Gotland.

Photo taken by another VICC composer, Sarah Bassingthwaighte, with the rauks on Faro.

The house Lee Hazelwood live in during his time in Sweden.

After a few days at the Electronic Music Studio (EMS) in Stockholm, I spent three special weeks at the very special place that is the Visby International Composers Centre.

I was very fortunate to have found time and resources to make a trip to Sweden possible at the end of 2025, with the aim of  making new work.

The trip began with my wonderful Swedish collaborators Ann Rosen and Lise Lotte Norelius with whom I devised a concert program at Fylkingen, in Stockholm entitled the Hanging Garden of Noise, also featuring my friend Jack Sargeant from Australia. This involved the world premiere of a new work, Bass Hang for four bass guitarists, as well as a noise bass performance with Jack’s text, and Rosen’s amazing conductive garments. Bass Hang involves the guitars being hung from the cieling, and played with bows, radios and other objects. The concept is that the inability to play the guitar as it was designed to be leads to new performance approaches and sound worlds. This includes it’s interaction with the amplification and resulting feedback. A bit Marclay’s Guitar Drag meets Abe Sada’s AmpStack.

Simultaneously, I was working at the Electronic Music Studio, Stockholm (EMS), in a studio with the Vintage Buchla 200 and one of the most amazing speaker set ups I have ever experienced: including a sub woofer line up. The mission I set myself here was to make tracks for works featuring acoustic instruments - a kind of backward engineering of new work yet unimangined.

A week after arriving I got the ferry to the Visby International Composers Centre (VICC) down in Gotland, an island at the base of Sweden. This is an amazing place for composers to work in electronic or notation studios, and I was a small electronic studio last time I came in April 2014. This time I was in the big Studio Alpha, with another amazing speaker/sub set up. Listening to music in here was again a real pleasure.

The unique VICC experience is also living with the three other composers in residence at the same time. Its not often composers get time to hang out together, and this is always a real highlight: not to mention learning about their music - Sarah Bassingthwaighte, Ceclia Klingspor, Hung Joo Jung and then Alfred Dambek. This includes the music of the recently appointed new director, composer Esiais Jänregard, who takes time to create well crafted written introductions to each of the composers in-house, and for the detailed introductions he provides to each of the artists talks undertaken whilst in residence.

During these three weeks i found ways to employ at least two of the EMS recordings on new works, and completed three works for premieres in 2026. This includes a new work in the Long Now series, for modular synthesiser (The Long Now III, due for premiere in Hamburg in May 2026) and a commission from Anna McMicheal for premiere in Australia and Vienna in 2026, entitled Vibrissae. I also worked on designing the live performance of a work recorded with Lionel Marchetti, Pour En Enfant Qui Dort and revisited some Gata Negra songs for an upcoming reunion gig of sorts at the NEU! Years Eve show in Perth.

Of course, you can’t just sit in a studio in a place like Visby. Esiais took us to Fårö to visit the Bergman Centre, which I dutifully prepared for my cramming as many of his films in as possible before leaving (“Shame” (1968) stands as a highlight for me). The ruaks - rock formations by the sea created during the iceage - are something incredible - and we had fun re-recreating poses from Bergman films around the beaches of the islands. VICC provides bikes - so lots of cycling adventures along the sea, into the forest and around the medieval city walls, saunas with sea dips, a visit to the house Lee Hazelwood lived in during his Cowboy in Sweden period, the choir at St Lucia in the cathedral, the antique botanical garden, the medieval city parade, and a particular highlight - the metal record and thrift store, Co-op records, embedded inside a supermarket just out of town.

Learning about the tragedy at Bondi beach during my time at VICC was awful, like it was for all Australians - it is strangely hard to process that kind of news when far from home. And the water had to be boiled due to infestation of the Gotland reservoir (I got good intel from a politician in the sauna, debunking my conspiracy theory based on a suspected sabotage incident earlier in the year).

International travel is not without its problems, and I am mindful of the climate impacts a trip from Australia to the other end of the world creates. Composers residencies sound so simple and luxurious- and hey, why go to Sweden when I could just head out bush and get stuff done in a cabin in the bush? But this coming together of creatives, in and out of productive creative time, is unique and incredibly valuable: for perspective, grounding, reminding that making art is important right now. We have value, what we do means something, we understand each other. Showing and making work in other places helps us to see our music, and the music of others, in a different light. Visby is a small town, quite remote for Europe. But is richer for this amazing place - this cycle of creative people washing through the city.

Special thanks to my fellow resident composers and director Esiais Jänregard, and John Davis for making me aware of this place all those years ago.