Step into the world of Chloë Sobek, a Naarm/Melbourne-based composer-performer whose work transforms the familiar into the extraordinary. Known for her ghostly atonalism and innovative sound collages, Chloë crafts immersive soundscapes using her custom-built violone—a six-stringed baroque double bass. Ahead of her spellbinding Dusk til Dark performance, we spoke with Chloë about her creative process, inspirations, and visions of the future.

Your work is described as existing at the “exploratory edges.” How do you interpret this space, and what draws you to create from that perspective?
Art that exists at the ‘exploratory edges’ is what I would personally define as avant garde, not in reference to the historical art movement, but in reference to work that sits at the frontier of new knowledge. Avant garde art is about being at the forefront of art-making and challenging the accepted orthodoxies of the time. This process is simultaneously serious and whimsical, playful and experimental; drawing on all forms of creative expression in order to find new trajectories in art-making. Experimental music can be challenging for audiences because the artist is pursuing something that is yet to exist. For me it is both valid and exciting!

You use a custom-built violone in your performances. Can you tell us about this instrument and what led you to explore its sound?
My first experience playing the violone (the Renaissance precursor to the double bass) was when I was studying at the Australian National Academy of Music. There was a production of The Coronation of Poppea and I wanted to play this historically appropriate instrument. Through this experience I became kind of addicted to the feel and sounds of the instrument; its elemental materials and complex sound world. While its size and the technique required to play the instrument has some things in common with the double bass, it was sufficiently different to inspire me to experiment and not fall into the familiar patterns that had become entrenched in my technique on the double bass.

I had the incredible opportunity to have a violone made for me, by the acclaimed Australian luthier, Ian Watchorn. It is a modern recreation of a violone modelled on an Ernst Busch instrument from 1630. I love the fact that this is a contemporary, Australian iteration of a Renaissance German instrument. The violone comes with a complex set of associations, where the instrument is perceived not just as a tool for music-making, but as a symbol of historical and cultural power dynamics. I often subvert this reading of the violone by playing it in a very unconventional way, producing sounds that, some may feel, are not the sounds that the instrument was created to make. There is an element to this that focuses on subverting the audience’s expectations, and furthermore, questioning our assumptions about cultural objects. There is also an aspect to what I do that deliberately questions and ‘disrespects’ the ‘pedestalling’ of western cultural artefacts and that champions the instrument as more than just a relic of a time and a place. In other words, I aim to demonstrate that the violone does not need to be relegated to that of an ‘early music’ instrument and that it has equal validity as a modern, sound-making technology.

What role does experimentation play in your creative process, and what are some of the most surprising or inspiring sounds you’ve uncovered?
Every work I create starts with a process of experimentation, even if I have a clear concept in mind to begin with. I often start with an idea for a sound or technique or combining specific materials and experiment until I find what I am looking for, or come across something else in the process. I think the most surprising sounds I have uncovered on my instrument have been at the intersection of extended techniques and electronic processing. This combination often produces something really unexpected.

You often work in ghostly, atonal sounds. What feelings or reflections do you hope these evoke in your audience?
I gravitate towards particular soundworlds for many different reasons. Sometimes I am trying to find a way to take the music in directions that are unexpected. This can involve layering seemingly incongruous musical ideas over one another, or ‘dirtying’ something that sounds pure and one dimensional.
I am also really interested in cultivating a more-than-human sensibility in my music. The term ‘more-than-human’ refers to the ‘natural world’ in the sense of everything that sits outside of that which we classify as human, but by the same token the word encompasses the notion that humans are embedded in (and albeit reliant on) the more-than-human world.

What interests me about all this is where we might situate musical expression in relation to this; the possibility that musical expression exists somewhere between gesture and language and that its genesis is grounded in the more-than-human world. I am driven to convey these ideas in my music but the fact that we have become so closed off from the more-than-human world is also something that is deeply saddening. This element is there in my work.

Which event are you most excited to experience during MPavilion Season 11?
Without a doubt the Greyscale ice cream!