maja osojnik

*1976 born in Slovenia, lives and works in Vienna, Austria

PRESS KIT — MAJA OSOJNIK
Short bio
Maja Osojnik is a Vienna-based singer, composer, improvising electroacoustic musician and sound artist. Working with voice, Paetzold bass recorders, field recordings and lo-fi electronics, she moves between song, noise, experimental composition and sound art. Trained in early and contemporary music, her work is widely praised for its intensity, poetic depth and demand for deep listening. She performs internationally, composes for film, theatre and radio plays, teaches in Vienna and Salzburg, and runs the label MAMKA RECORDS.

Press text
Maja Osojnik creates immersive electroacoustic works that unfold between fragility and force, intimacy and confrontation. Centered on voice, Paetzold bass recorders, field recordings and lo-fi electronic devices—often expanded through found objects—her music resists immediacy and rewards attentive, embodied listening. With a background in early and contemporary music, Osojnik has developed a distinctive artistic language spanning song, noise, experimental composition and sound art. Critics describe her work as dark, poetic and conceptually rigorous, frequently invoking practices of deep listening. Projects such as Doorways have been praised for their complex timbral architectures and their “ecological” approach to sound—where acoustic and electronic systems exist in symbiotic interdependence. Osojnik’s voice plays a central role in her work, shifting from intimate whispers to fierce, confrontational gestures. Emotional intensity is distilled into precise sonic form, avoiding sentimentality while retaining strong cathartic power. In live performance, she blurs the boundaries between concert, sound installation and physical theatre; critics highlight the choreographic quality of her playing and the visceral impact of performances that often linger long after the final sound has faded. Alongside her solo practice, Osojnik composes music for film, theatre, dance, radio plays and sound installations, performs internationally in numerous formations, and teaches composition and improvisation in Vienna and Salzburg. She is the founder of MAMKA RECORDS, a label dedicated to handcrafted limited editions.
Maja Osojnik has received numerous awards and scholarships, including multiple SKE Publicity Prizes, the Austrian State Composition Scholarship, the Passticio Prize (Ö1/ORF), the City of Vienna Prize for Composition and an annual working scholarship from the City of Vienna (2023). Her composition together with Matija Schellander (rdeča raketa) for the film One of Us – One of Us (dir. Stephan Richter) was awarded Best Film Music at Kinofest Lünen 2016. The Radio works, soundcomics together with Natascha Gangl & rdeča raketa have received first prizes at the Berliner Hörspielfestival and the Ö1/ORF Award for Radio Play of the Year.

Selected press quotes
“Sound as a biome — a symbiotic, interdependent system of acoustic and electronic worlds.” — The Wire
“Dark, imaginative and thought-provoking soundtracks for curious ears.” — Percorsi Musicali
“An album that demands deep listening and slow contemplation.” — African Paper
“A grand gesture… unparalleled in sincerity and emotional power.” — Aural Aggravation
“Visceral performances that linger long after the final sound.” — Umbigo Magazine

more press quotes:
“This is not an easy, or immediate, album. We all need time, and to take and make time. Along way, Osojnik leaves us haunted an incurring . Ot’s a spacious, and low—key but cheering.” “Maja Osojnik has created an album that’s dark, and difficult, but which creates space for slow contemplation and reflection and it’s no vague criticism to report that Doorways is ‘nice’. It’s much more besides: intriguing, it draws you in, and pulls you in different direction. It’s an album, alright.” Christopher Nosnibor for Aural Aggravation

“Doorways #9 relies on a continuous interchange between dimensional planes of timbres and techniques: an intensification of random vents and reprocessed piano joined by a patchwork of orchestral touches, a mournful dissonant adagio gradually dissolved with even more melancholy, atonal flourishes over a heartbeat-based tension, a ripple of shapeless string puffs and counterpoints, and a nightmarishly muted finale of ‘tutti’. Blende #1 often takes on the quality of an exercise in new chamber expressiveness, beginning with drone glaciations and hysterical glissandi, then augmented by baroque austerity and thriller-like figures, up to an ecstatic psalm refracted by electronics and an alienating finale for solo voice, sweet rarefied moans a cappella.” Michele Saran for Eulogy

“Doorways” zeigt sich als herausfordernde, poetische Hommage an die Praxis des “Deep Listening” und zugleich als so etwas wie deren Resultat. Osojnik richtet den Fokus auf das bewusste Zuhören und die Art, wie wir akustische Umgebungen in all ihren Dynamiken und zum Teil unerwarteten Veränderungen wahrnehmen und auf sie reagieren. Die Kompositionen lassen Raum für stille Reflexionen und laden dazu ein, mit einer unvoreingenommenen Aufmerksamkeit zu hören. Das Album ist eine akustische Reise, die durch ihre komplexe Schichtung von Naturgeräuschen, Instrumenten und elektronischen Elementen eine fragile Balance zwischen Realität und Abstraktion herstellt. Uwe Schneider für African Paper

Vienna-based sound artist, composer, singer, and improviser Maja Osojnik has demonstrated a restless curiosity in her work over the last couple of decades, and that intellectual energy lies at the root of the fascinating collision of electronic and acoustic sounds on Doorways, a collaboration with the Black Page Orchestra. The Best Contemporary Classical Music on Bandcamp, November 2024 by Peter Margasak

To listen to “Doorways” is to step into the forest at dawn, where light refracts through mist and every sound – the snap of a twig, the rustle of leaves – is imbued with meaning. It is to face the inevitability of change and to find beauty in its ceaseless, cyclical nature. It is to stand, exposed yet unafraid, at the doorway between what is and what could be. Vito Cammaretta for Chaindlk

These intriguing and enigmatic compositions demand Pauline Oliveros’ practice of conscious, deep listening. Both compositions invite the listener to engage in a kind of auditory gymnastics, where the listener must constantly adjust and reshape the aural sensitivity. Dark, imaginative and thought-provoking soundtracks for the curious ears. Eyal Hareuveni for Percorsi Musicali

Talk of the ecological turn in contemporary art and theory ever the last decade hat undoubtedly begun to grate. But it’s apt to describe “Doorways #09” and, to lesser degree, “Blende #01” as conceptually ecological. Not because they mimic nature but because they effectively represent a symbiotic, interdependence of adjacent systems. They are the sound of a biome, sound as a biome and a biome of sound. James Gormley for the Wire

Maja Osojnik – Between noise attack and dystopian chanson – Musician Maja Osojnik, born in Slovenia in 1976, has been living in Vienna for many years and has settled down here, solidly anchoring herself in the progressive sound environment with her mixture of avant-garde song structures and electronic soundscapes. Osojnik is a singer, a recorder player, but above all an electronic musician who makes the bits and bytes dance. Although the artist is generally credited with the avant-garde field, she is also active in many other genres: she plays Early Music, Jazz, Free Improvisation, Sound Art, makes music for film, theater, dance productions, etc. A multidisciplinary, comprehensive connected sound creator, which rides from the most beautiful sound next to silence to an acoustic shitstorm the whole range of signals, sound gestures, aggressive and delicate sounds in order to perform their integrated sound vision so diverse and differentiated in different contexts. Some time ago she even founded the label Mamka Records in order to work completely independently. Motto: By my art before I die. The biggest resonance in recent years has been achieved by the solo album “Let them grow”, in which Maja Osojnik combines songs, field recordings, guitar effects and electronic impulses to create a hodgepodge of fascinating magic sounds. “Osojnik skilfully moves between different musical languages,” writes the Music Austria magazine, “while retaining her unmistakable style, and the countless tracks she expounds are bound together by the overwhelming passion of a free-spirited personality.”(Thomas Mießgang for Ö1 Lexica, ORF, february 2019 )

An Architecture of Composition – Maja’s show was underlined by the authenticity, the power of spoken word, and the way her hands “danced” on the instruments. In MADEIRADiG, an intense voice and soft delicate hands manipulate the instruments as if we were watching a contemporary dance piece. The concert of Maja Osojnik is one of those that remain in our thoughts for days after the performance. Let Them Grow, her latest album, continues to sound in intense lightning bolts on the turntable platter. It arises from failure, from trial and error, from taking advantage of works that have never been shown or from those which have been refused and are now gaining a quite intimate new life. 2018 @ Madeiradig Festival, Elsa Garcia for Umbigo Magazine, Portugal

Any ideas of a night of non-disruptive music is quickly blown to pieces as Slovenian Maja Osojnik takes to the stage next. Bathed in firelike light, she manoeuvres her technology and vocals like a warrior. Heavy beats prop up her deep dramatic voice as she takes protest songs to another level. I’m amazed. In voice not dissimilar to Barbara Morgenstern or Monotekktoni and lyrically on page with Jomi Massage, her performance is intense and once again everyone leaves the auditorium ripped out of the calm we were lulled into at the start of the evening. She delivers a lasting shake-up which I’d not seen coming. @ Madeiradig Festival, Mette Slot Johnsen for http://passiveaggressive.dk

A very personal album, wild and edgy, which penetrates the eardrums of our internal deserts. Rockambula, IT, 2017 (album let them grow)

One of the most diverse and thrilling leftfield albums of the year 2016 so far. Intense, demanding and defo one to add to your collection for a reason. Nitestylez, DE, 03/2016

‘Let Them Grow’ is one of those albums that hits like a punch to the solar plexus. (…) This is not merely an album. It’s a grand gesture. (…) Taut, tense and from the heart, Let Them Grow sees Maja Osojnick present an album that is unparalleled in its sincerity and astounding in its emotional and musical power. Christopher Nosnibor, Aural Aggravation, UK, 02/2016

A powerful, haunting, versatile record full of minutely elaborated and suprising details. Susanna Niedermayr, Zeit-Ton, Ö1/ORF Vienna Austria, 01/2016

Mais do que uma construção musical, «Let them Grow» é um manifesto, no qual todos nós, em maior ou menor grau, acabamos por nos reconhecer! (google translate: More than a musical construction, “Let them Grow” is a manifesto, in which all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, have come to recognize us!) Dominiodeuses, PT, 10/2016

Her music goes beyond any categories like Electronic, Abstract, Industrial or contemporary Art-Pop. It’s really deep sound-art, and absolutely impressive! X-mist, Germany, 01/2017

Slovenian born Austrian resident Osojnik sings haunting, deeply affecting torch songs into an electrical storm of her own devising. Pieced together from sounds of radios, tape recorders, CDJs, “installation tubes” and “abandoned pianos”, Osojnik pushes these artefacts and the places she found them in until they become wild alien creatures seething with desires of their own. Every surface has its own grain, every deep drone fluctuates and breathes. Unidentifiable flying sound objects flicker in and out of view. Above it all, Osojnik’s voice is imbued with lust and longing, or righteously angry, as if on the point of bursting out of the recording to snarl straight in the listener’s ear. An urgent record, bursting with ideas. Wire, UK, 07/2016
one of our favorite records at the moment. Solenopole, Mission 189, RADIO FR, 02/2016

There’s an intellectual honesty and clarity to Osojnik’s work, by which I mean she is determined not to wallow in a swamp of unmixed emotional spew. Rather, she distils these feelings into sound poetry, into workable musical forms; hearing these can have an empowering, cathartic effect on the listener. Together, it seems we can work a way through the pain and uncertainty, and not get stuck in it. Perhaps we need more works like this in the world, as a way of understanding and dealing with these very common human feelings; Maja could take the place of 100 social workers, with her Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy. From 1st February 2016. Ed Pinsent, Sound Projector, UK, 07/2016

It can not be summarized in a booth and it fascinates from the first to the last tone. Live @ Moers Festival, 2016, writteninmusic.com