Helena Espvall

This piece was created during Playing the Rural Landscape residency in April 2015 and it’s titled “Regentag” because it was recorded on a rainy day and because of Helena Espvall’s love for the work and ideas of the painter Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser. The piece was made with a cello, two loop stations, a distortion pedal, and a delay. It was inspired by the rain and the river in Açores, Sul, Portugal.

Helena Espvall is a swedish-born composer and performer, known for her participation in the post-millennial psych-folk and free improvisation scenes. Her main instruments are the cello, guitar and Role Name Bio voice. She moved to Philadelphia in 2000, having initially dedicated her self to free improvisation (especially with cello), and later actively involved in the city’s weird-folk circuit. A collaboration with Masaki Batoh (Japanese psych band Santo) produced two albums released by Drag City. The first, “Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh,” included several Swedish folk songs and marked the artist’s first significant vocal appearance. In 2010 she released “Lapidary”, an improvised collaboration with Marcia Bassett, a leading figure of the noise/drone scene.