A landmark document of Swedish electroacoustic composition from the late 1980s, 5 Composers inaugurated Fylkingen Records' ambitious series devoted to showcasing the fertile creative milieu surrounding Stockholm's legendary EMS (Elektronmusikstudion). Released in collaboration with the Swedish section of ICEM (International Confederation for Electroacoustic Music), this compilation captures a pivotal moment when Swedish electronic music was achieving international recognition while maintaining its distinctive character—rigorous yet poetic, conceptually adventurous yet emotionally resonant.
The four works gathered here were all realized at EMS Stockholm, the state-supported electronic music studio that has served as a crucible for Scandinavian sound art since its founding in 1964. Each piece represents a different approach to the electroacoustic medium, from algorithmic composition to voice-based text-sound, from free improvisation's electronic translation to mystical soundscape construction.
Peter Lundén's "Living Structures" (1988) opens the collection with an exploration of genetic models as compositional architecture. Lundén applies principles borrowed from biological systems—mutation, evolution, self-organization—to generate musical structures that seem to grow and transform according to their own internal logic. The result is music that feels simultaneously calculated and organic, as if witnessing cellular processes translated into sound.
Jens Hedman and Erik Mikael Karlsson's collaborative work "Threads and Cords" (1990-91) stands as the compilation's centerpiece. Commissioned by Swedish Radio and realized at both EMS and the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation's studios, this experimental music-drama weaves human voices speaking different languages into a dense polyphonic tapestry. The piece was awarded First Prize at the 1992 International Rostrum of Electro-Acoustic Music—the EBU/UNESCO competition that serves as the genre's most prestigious international forum—establishing both composers as major voices in European electroacoustics. Karlsson would go on to win multiple prizes at Bourges and become a key figure in Swedish electronic music education.
Paul Pignon's "Z" (1987) brings the raw energy of free improvisation into the electronic domain. A founding member of the Radio Belgrade Electronic Studio in 1968, where he spent fourteen years developing the legendary EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer (for which he wrote the definitive manual), Pignon relocated to Sweden in 1986. In "Z," he maps the gestural vocabulary of saxophone and guitar improvisation into entirely new sonic territories—what Fylkingen's original notes describe as "completely different subspaces." The piece channels the expressionist intensity of free jazz through the transformative possibilities of electronic processing, maintaining the urgency of live performance while accessing timbres impossible on acoustic instruments.
Thomas Bjelkeborn's "El-Azraq" (1988) closes the anthology with a meeting between the composer and "the blue prophet." Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Cedar Walton's jazz balladry, Led Zeppelin's mystical grooves, and the emotional extremity of science fiction cinema, Bjelkeborn constructs a work rich in nuance and emotional depth. His approach—philosophical, image-laden, deeply personal—would later expand into interactive museum installations and large-scale outdoor environmental projects, but here we encounter his vision in its concentrated studio form.
The compilation's liner notes were contributed by Teddy Hultberg, editor of Earplay at the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, a crucial advocate for electroacoustic music's broadcast presence in Scandinavia. His contextualizing essay situates these works within the broader trajectory of Swedish sound experimentation, a tradition stretching back to Fylkingen's pioneering 1952 presentation of the first electroacoustic concert in Sweden and the 1963 premiere of computer-generated music.
Fylkingen itself—founded in 1933 as a chamber music society and gradually transformed into one of the world's most vital centers for experimental arts—provides the institutional frame for this music. The organization's close partnership with EMS, its history of presenting everyone from John Cage to Karlheinz Stockhausen to Merzbow, and its commitment to nurturing Swedish composers created the conditions for work like this to flourish. Several of the composers featured here would remain central to Fylkingen's activities for decades: Pignon served as producer from 1988-1992 and continues performing to this day, while Bjelkeborn became a longtime curator and remains active with ensembles like BOP (his duo with Pignon) and Sound Quartet.
5 Composers thus serves not merely as an anthology but as a snapshot of a creative ecosystem at a moment of exceptional vitality—when the technical resources of state-supported studios, the international networks of broadcast organizations and competitions, and the local community of Fylkingen's artist-members combined to produce work that could hold its own against the best electroacoustic music being made anywhere in the world.
