Marta Forsberg’s Archaeology of Intimacy feels like discovering a secret room in a familiar house, intimate in ways that catch listeners off guard. What began as sketches with her voice serving merely as a compositional placeholder evolved into something more vulnerable and essential: seven experimental pop songs that orbit around Forsberg’s own unvarnished vocals, complete with breath and imperfection. The Swedish-Polish composer has crafted her most personal work yet, using a deliberately narrow palette of synthesizers and fretless bass to create music that sounds both ancient and futuristic, like folklore transmitted through machines. With the help of co-producer Ludwig Wandinger, Forsberg discovered that her own voice was actually at the core of this collection, leading her to embrace the sibilants and imperfections she’d previously hidden behind pitch manipulation and synthetic processing. The album represents a distillation of all her interests as a composer: her fascination with the human voice, her intuitive understanding of synthesis, and her ability to weave compositional discipline together with melodies that resonate at a cellular level.
Archaeology of Intimacy will be released on October 3 by Warm Winters Ltd. Pre-order a copy HERE. Marta’s website can be found HERE.
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What are some of your earliest memories of music and sound? Was there a particular moment when you realized you wanted to create music rather than just listen to it?
I would like to say that it may be the lullabies of my grandmother, my father, and my mother, but I guess that’s nothing I can remember, actually. I guess I wish I remembered the lullabies as my first memories, but I guess that’s not possible. One thing that I definitely remember, though, is this toy violin out of plastic. I was really small, memories of like running around with a bunch of kids, and everyone wanted to play with this plastic violin, and I was so desperate, so badly wanted to touch this instrument. I think this desperation made me so fixated on the violin, so I asked my parents if I could start playing. I was very small, and I definitely didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
The other question about when I wanted to compose my own music.. I’ve been composing together with people a lot, my whole teenage years, I was in a band, and we would make all these songs together. We were six people in the band, and one of us would come with a small piece of music, and then everyone would add something, and at the end it was really something we created together. So, for a long time, this is how I related to musical composition. And then I remember quite well when I was around 20 or something, and I had been in many bands and I had been playing a lot of music, and I remember the first time I went into a music studio, and could close the door behind me, and I was completely alone for the first time, and I was so ready for it. I hadn’t felt drawn to being alone in composing before, but then there was really like a moment where I had accumulated so much stuff in me from playing with others, so yeah, I would say that that would be like two different and equally important experiences of music composition for me.
Growing up between Swedish and Polish cultures, were there different musical traditions or sounds in your household? How did those early influences shape your approach to composition?
My parents loved music, but were not musicians, and I didn’t have musicians in my family, so I don’t know.. Maybe the musical differences lie in the language, actually? That being in-between two languages, using them, living in them, and practising these cultures through speaking, through listening, and through being part of these different groups. Swedish is the language I had with my friends and in school, and then being part of this Polish community that was mostly present through the friends of my mother, and our travels to Poland every year. Yeah, maybe the different languages are the core of those “musical” expressions. I didn’t really consider how language could be influencing my composition process. That was something that came later, some years ago, when I started working with the voice in general, starting to explore the human voice and then cybernetic voice and environmental voice.. And I think then it became very, very clear that language and my knowledge of different languages have a huge impact on the way I look at sound and music, definitely.
How did you first learn to compose? Were you drawn to traditional structures, or did you always lean toward more experimental approaches?
My teacher, when I was like 14-15 years old, was interested in using the computer to produce music and record, and at the time in my small hometown in the north of Sweden, Härnösand, there was this pre-college education for electro-acoustic music, which is very special. It doesn’t exist anymore, but back then they had some sort of collaboration with my school, and we learned how to use Pro Tools and I remember these CDs with different sounds and sound effects, and you could take the sounds from the CD and use it in your Pro Tools project, and in the end we made like a concert and I think for me I just saw that as playing and improvising. I remember it felt very natural and intuitive to work with a computer, but I didn’t know that this was already composition. For me, I think music was restricted to classical music or folk music or jazz music; I didn’t know experimental music existed. I didn’t know that what we were creating could be called music at all.
First, when I moved to Stockholm, I was around 20 then, and I got to know a lot of people from the jazz and free improv scene. I started improvising with my violin, and suddenly this whole world kind of opened up, and I could for the first time see beyond traditional music genres, and what kind of musician you could be, and from that moment, everything felt more right for me. I loved playing the violin, but I always felt very restricted, and with the free improv and experimental music, I could actually feel myself.
This new record, Archaeology of Intimacy, moves away from long-form compositions toward experimental pop songs. What sparked that shift? Did the material itself demand a different approach?
Yeah, with this record, it was a very organic process. It grew over the course of two years, starting with my residency at Akademie der Künste in Berlin. During the residency, I decided to approach a new instrument in the studio every day. I recorded anything from these instruments and made a bunch of improvisations. And then I had other projects coming and going, then at one point I came back to this material because I had time, and I started adding voice, and it just grew. It was one of these times where I felt like I just opened my computer and added what was needed for the music; the recordings were telling me how to move forward. It was extremely enjoyable to work on this. And at the end of the process, I decided to invite people into my studio to listen to the songs, very raw, very unfinished versions. I had some friends come over at different points, and this was really cool. I enjoyed it so much! And I felt very brave for showing this unfinished material to people I really looked up to! I got some really honest feedback, and I learned to let other people’s thoughts and ears be part of the process.
When did you realize your own voice was actually at the core of this music? What was that revelation like?
There was like one or two songs where I actually thought, “Yeah, I definitely wanna use my voice on this one” or “that’s like good enough”, but the intention was to mainly work with other people’s voices. But the moment I was sitting in the studio with Ludwig Wandinger the first time, and I showed him “For the night” where Agnes Schneidewind is reading her poem and Ella Olivia Bender is singing. He was somehow surprised when I said that these were the voices of my friends and not my own voice. I mean, I don’t know what he was thinking, but I got the feeling he was surprised, or like maybe he didn’t get why I would necessarily use other people’s voices when I could just use my own? And then I showed him “Flowers”, and on the early versions, I used a heavy pitch shifter on top of my voice, so you can’t hear me, and he asked if we could mute the pitch shifter just for reference. I was like “omg, it’s gonna sound so baaaad..” and then we listened and I was like “okay this is a very, very different song”, but not bad. He said that he liked the version without the pitch shifter better. Then and there, I realise we can either continue using the synthetic voices and other people’s voices, or I can go another path, which is using my voice. I could still use the voices of others, but I didn’t need to shy away from using my voice. It got me curious and excited, because it felt like a very new path to go, so I decided to try it out.
You mention including the sibilants and imperfections of your voice rather than polishing them away. There’s something radical about it to me that really resonates. Was that scary to embrace? How does it feel to have those intimate moments preserved in the recordings?
I think because I don’t see myself as a singer at all, or.. I’ve been singing in choirs a lot, and I love singing with others, but I have no particular opinion on my own voice, like, I don’t hate it, I don’t love it. It’s there, and it’s cool as long as I sing more or less in pitch. In general, I’m quite pragmatic and easy to satisfy, haha! So I think for this record, I knew I couldn’t do it “perfect” because I’m not a singer, so I would need to accept that my voice is what it is, and see it as a very personal invitation into my world for the listener. That in itself felt like the more important part rather than presenting musical material that sounded “excellent” or something like that.
The press notes mention your “exceptional restraint and power” with a relatively narrow sound palette. How do you approach limitation as a creative tool? Does working within constraints actually open up more possibilities?
I absolutely love limitations, it’s my favourite thing in the world! I find it so relieving to know what I have, makes me calm and curious – I feel like I can pour myself into it, like dive into it. And there you find out that it’s endless and unpredictable anyways! So yeah, for me it’s a gift to have a clear frame when I work.
Ludwig Wandinger co-produced and mixed the record and helped you realize your voice was at the core. How important was that outside perspective in shaping the album?
Yeah, asking Ludwig was like a big step for me. I had listened to his music, had stumbled across it in a different context, and I found his musicianship super cool, like the way he moves between different genres and styles, and ways of making music. There was something that resonated with me. The way some artists don’t restrict themselves and the way they jump between different kinds of sounds and expressions, I find that super inspiring. Im very happy he said yes! We met a couple of times while I was still making the music, and then I asked him to mix the record too. For me, it’s been a great process to work with him, he’s so respectful, honest, and clear.
“Archaeology of Intimacy” suggests digging through layers to uncover something deeply personal. What were you excavating in making this music?
So this music came to be in a time when I felt like things started opening up and also settling in me. I had had a longer stretch of time with bigger changes in my life, maybe the biggest change was moving to Berlin in 2019. And like three years ago, I kind of started feeling a sort of peace, and extreme curiosity about the world and of music. I felt so much in tune with the things I really liked doing! I think I had been very focused on my work, moving forward through pushing, and somewhere in the process, I kind of lost the joy of doing it. And then I started (re)discovering stuff that I really enjoyed, they were inside of the music, but also outside of the music – I found new friends, started longboarding more, and going clubbing again. In this process, I also started listening to music that made my heart skip a beat. I felt like I was flying all the time and at perfect peace at the same time. So like slightly terrified by this weird happiness, haha! And I also started studying an online course in Archaeology, which has been a true highlight. So all of that has been my excavating ground, and this music is one artefact that I found so far. 🙂
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