Taking their name from the illusory worlds in Jorge Luis Gorbes’ 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius', Tlön's debut album 'Reality' (Jazzland, March '25) delves into surreal landscapes of dreamy fantasies, haunting nightmares, tranquil beauty and the battling of mundanity.
Tlön is a musical duo bringing together acoustic strings, spoken word and rich electronic textures. Made up of cellist/composer Gregor Riddell and violinist/composer Sara Övinge, their collaboration began in summer 2019 when they recognised a shared interest in classical instrumental, improvisation, contemporary classical - both creatively and instrumentally – and electronically produced music. In June 2020, Bugge Wesseltoft offered to release an album of their music on Jazzland Records.
They have recently finished mastering this record and will release it in June 2024. The narrative anchor for this album is expressing nostalgia for lost innocence and consequent quest for mystery and battling mundanity. We aim to forge a style that highlights our collective musical and literary strengths, and simultaneously offers an entertaining piece of art.
Tlön Debut Album Recording - Project Description
Tlön is a musical duo bringing together acoustic strings, spoken word and rich electronic textures.
The duo – made up of Gregor Riddell and Sara Övinge – seeks support towards recording our debut album of
co-written music. We are looking to create an album that expresses our varied musical and cross-disciplinary
influences into a singular style. We plan to collaborate with Erlend Mokkelbost as co-producer with us to
record, mix and produce this album in early 2024 at a studio in Nesodden. We will release this on Jazzland
Records in summer 2024.
Gregor Riddell is a cellist and composer based in Oslo since 2015 and originally from London. He first met
violinist/composer Sara Övinge through his partner Torun Stavseng, who is also an Oslo-based cellist.
Their collaboration began in summer 2019 when they recognised a shared interest in classical instrumental,
improvisation, contemporary classical - both creatively and instrumentally – and electronically produced music.
In June 2020, Bugge Wesseltoft offered to release an album of their music on Jazzland Records based on his
previous work with Sara. This provided them with an obvious opportunity to dig deep into the project.
In April 2021 Gregor received 30,000 NOK from Komponistene Vederlagsfond to support composing a new
electroacoustic work for this project which they used to record the track ‘Huxley’ (see audio in attachments)
with Bernt Isak Wærstad at Brageveien studio. They also recorded a series of harmonic cycles called ‘Hinge
Full Throttled’ (also in the audio attachments section as a SoundCloud link). Neither of these recordings will be used in the upcoming album, but elements from these compositions will be used in a new format.
Tlön has since consolidated through-composed new music, ambient electronic textures, text and spoken word
(predominantly in English, Norwegian and Swedish), field recordings and instrumental improvisations all of
which will feature in the upcoming album.
With this NKF funding application, Tlön seeks support to cover costs that relate specificallyy to: studio hire;
recording, editing, mixing with Erlend Mokkelbost; and, mastering.
Costs relating to promotion, distribution and design are covered by Jazzland, but we need to cover the costs of a photographer and video artist for promotion use. We will apply for a separate fund in this regard (see budget for more details).
Provisionally, we’ve decided to structure the album as an LP format made up of two twenty minute sides of
music: the first side is made up of two ten minute compositions; the second side is comprised of shorter works making use of our field recordings in line with instrumental and electronic improvisations including processing and sampling from extracts derived from the first side of the record treated as musical ‘motives’.
The narrative anchor for this album is expressing nostalgia for lost innocence and consequent quest for mystery and battling mundanity. We aim to forge a style that succinctly highlights our collective musical and literary strengths, and simultaneously offers an entertaining piece of art.
Gregor Riddell plays the cello and writes music.
He has been a member of the Solstice Quartet, Living Room in London, KGB, Tre Voci and Odysseus Piano Trio with whom he performed and toured across Europe at venues and festivals including the Wigmore Hall,
Union Chapel, Southbank Centre, Edinburgh Festival, Musikverein (Vienna), Musée d'Orsay (Paris), among others.
Alongside his own projects, he’s written music for Galya Bisengalieva, Duo TÖ, the BEAST (Birmingham University), Asamisimasa and Cikada. Having written for the London Contemporary Orchestra, Gregor is also a principle player and has collaborated with artists including Radiohead, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Sarah Davachi, Actress and Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch.
Following the release of debut album UNDA (2019) and reworks (2021) on Focused Silence, duo project BirdWorld made their Edinburgh Fringe debut in August 2024 and will release of their second album ‘Nurture’ on Norwegian label Dugnad in spring 2025.
He recently set up a versatile Oslo-based session orchestra called OBO which recently performed their debut concert with Sigur Rós at Oslo Spektrum.
He co-runs an Oslo-based online platform with Torkjell Hovland called SVS broadcasting adventurous music from the Nordics.
Gregor was born in London, studied music at Cambridge University and composition at the Royal College of Music. He works mostly between Norway and the UK and lives with his family in Oslo.