Fe-mail + Lotta Melin

The trio "Fe-mail + Lotta Melin", that consists of the dancer Lotta Melin and the music duo Fe-mail; Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje and Hild Sofie Tafjord, is working in the fields of openness and density within the acoustical and the electronic sound world.
Music and dance is being created together in the instant now, with the help of a spontaneous sharing of the sounding material, coming both from the musicians and the dancer(!). The group makes use of a.o. contact microphones, headset microphones, theremin, samplers, french horn, voice and various live electronics…..
The actual physical sound of the moving body is being picked up by the electronical instruments and being processed/transformed into an electronic soundscape that is constantly changing and developing.
The meaning of the performance, its form and contents is being created in the actual process where the dance and the music is met in a free improvisation.


Fe-mail + Lotta Melin essay
movement in sound – sound in movement

Fe-mail
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje - voice & electronics
Hild Sofie Tafjord - french horn & electronics
+
Lotta Melin - dance, movements & electronics

I couldn’t believe it…what was I actually witnessing ???

Those tables were just filled with electronic gears, cables, mixing controls, microphones and god knows what… and on the floor there was a lonely theremin standing by itself and “BANG” three wild & dangerous Scandinavian women entering the stage and just banging the SHIT out of every tool available, at a very high tempo, at a very high level, under total control creating Improvised Music an Dance that was, and is, just….awesome, fuckin AWESOME…an interaction that actually was working on equal terms !!! Is that at all possible, that…one thing is not just an accompaniment to the other? That “giving and taking” and “sharing risks” are happening at the same time, on the same level???
YES!!!
What I was witnessing was a performance that really took the breath out of me, made my jaw hit the floor in a loud bang, made the liquid in my brain shakin’, turning towards whipped cream……………..

sound gestures with lightnin’ speed
brutal noise attacks
sharp glittering eye & sound contact
slow melodic beauty
insane no-nonsense poetry
brass explosions

everything happening at the very same moment!

Everyone knows that a sound/phrase/gesture in music starts with a movement from the musician, either just an inside tremble or an actual big outer movement, that is starting the actual process. The musical phrase is NOT just about sounding material; it really HAS to start from something mechanically moving in order to produce any sounds at all. This was realised already at the very first jazz recordings, now almost 100 years ago (!), when the sound engineers had to tie the musicians feet at the legs of the stools they were sitting on, in order to prevent the feet to automatically start tapping loudly on the wooden floor…of course, this was a very unpractical solution and really hard for the actual music to be made under those conditions (the opposite, of course, as valid; how can a dancing movement start without feeling/singing that tone inside yourself first. I guess…it is all connected!).
I think that Fe-mail and Lotta Melin realised really right away that all feets, legs, hands, arms, heads and all the rest of the body and the soul has to be untied in order to create…and create they do! When I’m watching one phrase starting with a wink from a toe, being picked up by a gurgling French horn, mutated through sampled analogue insanity and transformed immediately with the help of furious, guttural moaning and ended with a big gesture from a “thrown” arm that makes the theremin screaming in ecstasy…then I experience a totally new level and vision in the field of interacting in music and dance. THIS IS THE SHIT!

Fe-mail & Lotta Melin performing on their very first tour together as a project (at Fylkingen in Stockholm in the fall of 2002)…I can’t really express what I felt that night except for joy & happiness!
After years of working with dance, as an improvising sax player, I’ve been searching for that in-the-moment explosivity and sharing of the instant NOW…only really finding it while working as a duo with Lotta Melin – who HAS to be one of the best hidden secrets in the so called “dance world” in Europe…Lotta has over the years collaborated with Kim Gordon, Leif Elggren, Benoit Maubrey - AudioGruppe, GUSH, Ken Vandermark and many many more on the international scene….anyway, here it is;
the combination of the right people, musicians, artists in the same group…we, the others, have to be really thankful for that, because this formation will just RULE this planet and play the pants off, of every male or female artist dealing with free improvisation in music and dance...seriously, THIS IS THE SHIT!!!
Maja and Hild Sofie is working together since years, so much as a very strong, open minded entity, so that it is almost scary…both of them falling back on collaborations with a vast number of musicians and artists (Jaap Blonk, Evan Parker, Paal Nilsen-Love, Ingebrigt Haaker Flaten, Håkon Kornstad…). Fe-mail is coming from the sensational new spring of Norwegian experimental music that is now spreading quick as a sneeze in a closet… WATCH OUT!!!
In a way, I shouldn’t even try to explain this whole thing, because it really REALLY HAS to be experienced to be believed…it is really easy (and joyful) to recapture the sensation of seeing and listening (what is called experiencing) to these three Scandinavian women…and there is more to come!!!

Mats Gustafsson, Feb. 2003


“ They will take no prisoners…and I don’t know where to hide!” Olof Madsen