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Henrik Olsson

Henrik (Thor Oscar) Olsson is a swedish guitarist and composer, based in Copenhagen. He is taking the sonic expression of the electric guitar into new, unpredictable domains through unheard timbres and textures, often with the help of various preparations and unconventional playing techniques. His playing has attracted attention in different projects such as his own groups Hand of Benediction and Penumbra Ensemble, or collaborations like the improv duo Olsson/Rubin, the avantgarde/rock project The Hum, the noise-trio EHM and diverse improvisational contexts. He composed all the music for his Penumbra Ensemble, which has been very well received among critics and referred to as "a surrealist vision, a deeply personal expression of avant-garde rock, jazz, world music and poetic soundscapes" by All About Jazz. He is a member of the independent label and improvisers' collective Barefoot Records and of the curators' team for Lutter 0re, a concert series for challenging music at Peryton gallery, in Copenhagen. He is well established on the danish jazz/improvisation scene and has performed with musicians such as Kresten Osgood, Sture Ericson, Peter Friis Nielsen, Lotte Anker, P.O Jorgens, Eugene Chadbourne, Herb Robertson, Olie Brice, Daysuke Takaoka, Takashi Sugawa, Max Johnson, among many others. He has performed at clubs and festivals all over Europe, as well as in Japan.

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Album Review

Henrik Olsson: Hand of Benediction

Read "Hand of Benediction" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


This is the trio's debut recording led by cagey and inventive Swedish guitarist Henrik Olsson for a set that resides in an opaque realm, containing dabs of free jazz, punk jazz and avant-garde rock. The agile and limber trio ventures through some enigmatic musical territory via tight unison phrasings, multipart progressions, animated and linear uprisings along with crunching rock riffs and fleeting nods to classic jazz fusion. “Shocking method restores lost hair" sounds like a séance with ...

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"Amazing, suggestive - a fascinating debut and an invigorating style denial " - Alex Schmitz, Jazz Podium

”The album is a rollercaster of sounds. At times intense and noisy and other times dreamy and ethereal... It is a surrealist vision ...a deeply personal expression of avantgarde-rock, jazz, world music and poetic soundscapes " - Jakob Baekgaard, All About Jazz

"One can only at the warmest recommend this dreamlike dive somewhere between sweet melancholy, jazzy wit and raw expressivity” Tim Walter, NMZ Magazine

"A kind of musical metamorphosis, from which abstract sound textures arises that, sometimes are noisy, or becomes an authentic deja vu melodically and harmonically. A work of compositional freedom, an original concept that is worth knowing” Ana Isabel Palha Rodrigues, Punch Magazine

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Primary Instrument

Guitar, electric

Location

Copenhagen

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Conventional

Self-published
2022

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The Full Experience

Self Produced
2021

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Under Overfladen

Fiil Free Records
2020

buy

Hand of Benediction

Barefoot Records
2019

buy

Penumbra Ensemble

Self Produced
2014

buy

12-6

From: Under Overfladen
By Henrik Olsson

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