A river may begin at a recognisable source, but what happens when it travels through memory, imagination and the constantly shifting geography of identity? With “Headwater” (recently released on Room40), Australian double bassist, vocalist and composer Helen Svoboda explores precisely this fluid territory, creating a work in which childhood recollections, fleeting musical fragments and bodily experience become parts of an ever-changing whole. Originally conceived for an interdisciplinary performance at Melbourne’s Abbotsford Convent, the album brings together double bass, voice, electronics and improvisation, with contributions from Selma Savolainen, Jacques Emery and Tilman Robinson. Its sixteen concise pieces behave less like conventional songs than fragments of a continuously unfolding thought, occasionally resurfacing in altered forms, as memories tend to do when they have been left alone long enough.
Svoboda’s approach to the double bass is particularly distinctive. Rather than treating it simply as a low-register instrument, she explores its overtones and vocal possibilities, creating an intimate relationship between instrumental resonance and the human voice. The presence of a second double bassist, alongside Savolainen’s vocals and Robinson’s electronics, expands this personal vocabulary into a collective sound world. Yet “Headwater” is not merely an exercise in musical interplay. Its underlying concerns are deeply personal: the persistence of the younger self, the instability of recollection, and the possibility that identity is not something to be recovered but something that continues to grow.
In this conversation, Helen Svoboda discusses the album’s origins, its transformation from live performance into recorded work, the influence of physical space and movement, and the delicate balance between composition and improvisation. We also explore the relationship between voice and instrument, the creative possibilities of collaboration, and the ways in which music can preserve the traces of experiences that language struggles to describe. Like the river suggested by its title, “Headwater” does not offer a definitive destination. It keeps finding new channels.
Chain D.L.K.: Hey Helen, I hope you’re doing great! Let’s immediately focus on your recent album. The title “Headwater” points to the beginning of a river, but the album seems less interested in returning to an untouched origin than in questioning whether such an origin can ever really be recovered. When did this idea of the “headwater” become central to the work?
Helen Svoboda: I chose the title Headwater, because it relates largely to a sense of self. The beginning, or source, is the self – but naturally throughout the progression of life, many different streams emerge. I think that we essentially maintain many elements of our younger selves, but it is difficult to fully recover these threads due to the malleability of memory and recall.
Chain D.L.K.: Callum Mintzis’s text describes childhood, memory, the body and the natural world almost as parts of one continuously transforming organism. How closely does that language correspond to the way you were thinking about the music while composing it?
Helen Svoboda: The music for Headwater follows a series of threads or ‘earworms’ that weave into one another, and occasionally resurface later in various abstracted forms. When conceptualising the album, I was inspired to use these threads to blur the lines between the past and present. Just like memory, these earworms change and shift over time.
Chain D.L.K.: There is an intriguing tension in “Headwater” between the desire to recover something fundamental and the realisation that perhaps nothing has actually been lost. Did that contradiction influence the musical structure of the album?
Helen Svoboda: I think a tension gradually arises in this album because nothing ever quite settles. I wanted to compose material that moves fluidly from one song/piece into the next, making the progression of the album more important than a distinct beginning or arrival.
Chain D.L.K.: The album was originally composed for a larger interdisciplinary performance at Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne in 2024. How different was the music in that original context, and what changed when you began shaping it into an album?
Helen Svoboda: The live performance of this work is very connected to the sound of the album, but the order was different. We recorded the material in our last development leading up to the performance season at the Convent, and Tilman and I worked on it quite extensively during 2025 to shape it into its next progression. But all the while, it was really important to maintain the feeling and energy of the live performance, and that has definitely carried through into the album itself.
Chain D.L.K.: How much did the physical architecture and history of Abbotsford Convent influence the composition? Did you write with particular spaces, movements or visual elements in mind?
Helen Svoboda: I suppose the Convent was quite influential for this work when we were developing it there, working mostly in a stunning space called The Oratory. This room has a natural reverb that travels and travels and travels… which was perfect when we were experimenting with the blurred lines between each piece, discovering how one might remain or echo while another begins.
Chain D.L.K.: Your double bass is obviously central to your musical identity, but on “Headwater” it often seems to function as something more than a conventional bass instrument. What possibilities were you looking for in the instrument while writing these pieces?
Helen Svoboda: An interesting irony has surfaced in my bass playing during the past five years or so, as I have become more and more interested in developing material that mirrors the timbre or range of the viola and cello – particularly using the overtones in combination with my voice. When writing the pieces, I wanted to create a distinctive blend between my voice, Selma’s voice, my double bass and Jacques’ double bass, often existing within a similar range to create a chamber version of my solo sound. Tilman’s electronics were instrumental in shaping these timbres and sounds into a cohesive world.
Chain D.L.K.: The album also gives your voice a particularly important role. Did you approach singing differently from playing the double bass, or do you experience the two as related physical forms of expression?
Helen Svoboda: I started to sing ‘through’ the double bass a number of years ago, as I became obsessed with the combination of the overtones and my vocal timbre. Headwater is a deliberate expansion of this original mode. With an ensemble, I was able to expand my role as a vocalist into realms that aren’t always possible when I’m multitasking everything by myself.
Chain D.L.K.: Selma Savolainen’s voice creates an interesting relationship with your own. What were you looking for in that combination, and how did the music change once another voice entered its internal world?
Helen Svoboda: Selma and I have worked together since 2019, and she is one of my biggest vocal inspirations. Our combined Finnish heritage creates an interesting synergy in our syllabic explorations, and through singing and making music together over the years we have found that there is a real synergy in our vocal approaches. For this reason, I envisioned her on this project – singing the songs/materials in her distinctive voice to expand their identities outwards into another stream.
Chain D.L.K.: Tilman Robinson is credited both with electronics and production. How did the electronic component develop during the making of the album? Were the electronics conceived as an environment around the acoustic instruments, or did they sometimes determine where the compositions themselves went?
Helen Svoboda: Tilman and I spoke early on when I was conceptualising Headwater, dreaming up some possibilities for the use of electronics in this work. What was really interesting was his idea to use tactile transducers in the live performance, which we used to activate the body of the double bass as a speaker. Elements of this live performance recording were included in the album material – particularly the track ‘Pekki’, where the rocking of a double bass is incorporated halfway through the track.
I would say that the compositions developed acoustically first, and then Tilman built an electronic world around them to enhance and expand them.
Chain D.L.K.: There are moments where breath, room noise and apparently incidental sounds seem capable of becoming musical material. What attracts you to these imperfections and peripheral sounds?
Helen Svoboda: As an improviser, I’m surrounded by extramusical sounds that happen incidentally – and I like to keep these because they add to the collective story.
Chain D.L.K.: The credits reveal several different compositional relationships, including pieces co-composed with Selma Savolainen and Tilman Robinson and Jacques Emery’s composition. How did you decide where individual authorship should give way to collective authorship?
Helen Svoboda: When we were developing the live show, there were some pieces that formed during the rehearsals as directly a result of these collaborations. When working with improvisers, there is always a sense of co-authorship that is involved, and each of these amazing musicians brought themselves generously into the project to make it what it was.
Chain D.L.K.: Jacques Emery plays double bass alongside you on much of the record. What changes when two people inhabit the same instrument’s territory, particularly when the instrument is already being used in such an expansive way?
Helen Svoboda: With Jacques, I wanted to double a lot of the solo material I had developed on the bass into a duplicated, expansive version of itself. He is an incredible bassist and was able to learn the material really quickly, and to bring himself into it also. The original idea came from a perceived lack of opportunities for contemporary bassists to play with one another – often there is only one of us in an ensemble.
Chain D.L.K.: The album contains sixteen relatively concise pieces rather than a small number of extended works. Was that fragmentation part of the original conception, or did the episodic form emerge gradually during the editing and sequencing process?
Helen Svoboda: When I was composing this material, I was really interested in miniature songs that are fleeting. With the idea of memory and streams of self, there is not always a resolution or long-form process in the mind. Think of a strange dream – we often don’t remember exactly how we ended up somewhere, or where it started or finished. The idea was bring this into Headwater to keep things fluid and, at times, restless.
Chain D.L.K.: Some of the music feels extremely intimate, while other passages seem to open towards something much larger and almost elemental. How do you decide when a piece should remain close to the body and when it should expand beyond it?
Helen Svoboda: The pieces revealed this in the room. With the opening album track ‘If’, I knew I wanted this to be expanded beyond its edges. With a song like ‘Chords’, I knew this should exist just as it is.
Chain D.L.K.: Your music has often occupied the territory between improvisation, composition and experimental performance. Where would you place “Headwater” within that continuum? Did you allow the musicians significant freedom once the compositions had been established?
Helen Svoboda: Headwater brings together all of those elements for sure, and it was one of the first works where I was able to combine all of these facets. We were fortunate to work with the wonderful Melbourne choreographer/dancer Jo Lloyd during the live performance development, and she brought out some approaches towards the music that significantly changed the sound and form. I’m really interested in incorporating intentional gesture into performance, even if it’s subtle, to challenge the way that I relate to the double bass and my voice. For instance, if I’m walking backwards while playing the double bass, or sitting on the floor, then my relationship with the instrument radically changes. If I’m singing and holding my arms above my head, then my tone and breath support shifts. With this element of the show, all of us had the freedom to implement movement and improvisational decisions at different times, while other elements remained quite ‘set’ – particularly the songs.
Chain D.L.K.: The album repeatedly connects bodily experience with the natural world without treating nature simply as a picturesque backdrop. What does the forest, river or animal world represent for you musically, as opposed to symbolically?
Helen Svoboda: I have always been inspired by nature, as are many of us! But for me, this remained an abstract concept within the work. What is really important with Headwater is the correlation between the self as a body, and a river as a body of water.
Callum’s liner notes talk about nature through his experience of listening to the album, and communicate a story that occurred only in his imagination. At times, I know I was personally picturing a wintery Finnish landscape in the material – especially with tracks such as “Morning Hepuli” and “Void of Space”. But it will be different for everyone, which I quite like.
Chain D.L.K.: There is a recurring question in the accompanying text about whether the protagonist might actually be creating the reality she believes she is discovering. Does “Headwater” deliberately leave room for uncertainty about what is remembered, imagined or physically experienced?
Helen Svoboda: Because this is a very personal body of work, I didn’t want to make it too explicit how others should experience it. I want listeners to develop their own stories and associations with the material. However, one might read Callum’s beautiful liner notes before listening to spark their imagination.
Chain D.L.K.: The idea that the headwater remains present throughout the entire river suggests that identity might be cumulative rather than something we have to retrieve from the past. Did making this album change your own understanding of memory or childhood in any way?
Helen Svoboda: I like that! I think identity is definitely cumulative, and ever-changing. But the child self is always there, and I think we can benefit by digging deeper into our younger imaginations and a sense of childlike wonder.
Chain D.L.K.: You have worked across improvisation, contemporary composition, experimental music and interdisciplinary performance. Do you feel that these distinctions are becoming less useful to you, or do the differences between those practices still matter when you are composing?
Helen Svoboda: I really struggle with labelling my practice, and I know many artists who also do! For me it’s just a process of following an interest or curiosity, and seeing where it ends up.
Chain D.L.K.: If “Headwater” begins with the question of what remains when we lose our compass, what did you discover by the time you reached the end of the record? Did the music provide an answer, or did it make the question more complicated?
Helen Svoboda: This is a good question. I think neither – there was no answer, but that is okay. It was a process, and more streams will continue to emerge over the lifetime of my artistic practice, and from my own self.
Visit Helen Svoboda on the web:
www.helensvoboda.com/
helensvoboda.bandcamp.com/music