One of the streaming platforms hosting Calla’s new EP Burn Cycle has a useful collection of hashtags for initiates to her oeuvre.
They run, left to right, # cinematic, # electronica, # operatic. Then there’s a fourth one, which seems a bit superfluous, # Electronic. Maybe that one could have been reallocated to # incendiary or perhaps # elemental.
Anyway, we get the idea, expect to be fully engaged.
Ōtepoti-raised but currently Tāmaki Makaurau-domiciled Calla Knudson’s new work builds on previous releases, the likes of 2023’s Patterns of Remedy, mixing again Calla’s operatic soprano, looping violin and by turns sweeping and crashing electronic soundscapes.
The extra twist here, is where the music was first performed.
Burn Cycle was composed for the burning of a three-storey effigy at Kiwiburn festival and indeed performed as the huge wooden structure was consumed by fire.
On the EP, Burn Cycle runs to 18 minutes, broken into three parts, Hear, Now, This, reflecting "the cyclical nature of destruction and renewal".
That reflects the vision the festival organisers and effigy builders had for their bonfire.
"The brief was relatively broad for me," Calla says. "I took that and also the concept of fire as a ritualistic process of renewal and release and rebirth, and then built in my own narrative into that as well, so that the final piece of the cycle is my personal rebirth journey through the flame, so to speak.
"It was actually quite amazing," she says of the Kiwiburn experience. "I was put in the back of a horse truck."
From that rough stage, she was connected to three sound systems. The paddock festival involves groups of people setting up their own "sound camps".
"It’s sort of like a pop-up venue and they'll all have large-scale sound systems. And so we managed to hook up three separate sound camps, three large sound systems together that fed into where I was playing.
"I performed the piece by looping vocals and violin, playing live keys, as well as using Ableton Live to trigger samples of the electronic production I had composed for the piece."
The design of the burn had its own narrative, to which Calla was playing, involving, among other things, fire-spinners, fireworks and a crescendo when a sizeable cannon exploded, unleashing further fuel for the flames.
"We had someone pressing a button for when that was going to happen, and then someone was on comms on the radio in front of the horse truck, and they were letting me know when they were about ready to do that, so I could build up to that climax of the piece."
Calla composed 30 minutes of music to accompany the event, which on the day needed to cover a slightly longer burn. Then, for the EP, it had to be refined and condensed back to the essential 18 minutes.
"I thought it was only going to take a month," she says of that process. "It took all year to get it to a point ready for release, which is funny. Projects always seem to take longer than you expect."
There are no plans to play Burn Cycle again live to support the EP’s release as Calla says nothing could match that first festival outing, but Calla is inviting people to set up listening parties, through Bandcamp, for which she’ll join online to talk about the composition.
"I think I'd just invite people into a presence with the music, something that's nice to listen to with your eyes closed, and a good sound system."
