Ewelina Vlček-Chiu (Ai fen)

Ewelina Vlček-Chiu
(Ai fen)


“The Room”
musical composition

Ai fen is a Polish/Chinese composer, musician and producer based in Prague. The artist’s namesake project unravels the Self, exploring her identity as a biracial, multinational woman growing up millennial.

Through sweeping tracks and visceral performances combining soprano flute, keys and a dramatically fluctuating vocal, Ai fen has engaged audiences with her particular blend of “screamo-pop” or “trauma-pop,” blending experimental pop together with techno, neoclassical, drone and ambient elements with live incorporation of keys, soprano flute, samples and of course vocal performance.

After releasing two studio albums, postforever (self released, 2020) and Daily Grief ( Tender Matter, 2022) Ai fen turns away from electronic production in I’ve Been a Body, released on Rome-based label White Forest. I’ve Been a Body is scaffolded on piano tracks played in one take. With the sound of the acoustic piano at the forefront, Ai fen modulates this sound live through a fx chain, more often than not choosing to dissolve the tracks into chaos and drone.

Floating around the album’s edges, filling in the tender spaces around the piano’s dramatic centerfold sound, are tracks incorporating the flute, family recordings, spacious sound design, and Ai fen’s voice in spontaneous moments of sacrally inspired song. Excavating our fragile corporeality through the prism of motherhood, I’ve Been a Body examines the various crossroads of our effervescent existence in a body. 

"During my residency at Nu’vem, I worked on a musical performance entitled “The Room,” an improvisational piece with a loose structure built around poetic and lyrical texts exploring a dream I had when I was pregnant with my second child. The dream entailed our family moving to a new apartment wherein I discovered a room which “performed only for me.” Only when I was present in the room, either alone or with someone, was time experienced differently within the room as opposed to outside. I could spent what felt like 10 hours in the room but was “in reality” only two minutes. The common desire for “more time” had manifested as a visceral dream. To sonically concretize the somatic experience of this dream I allowed myself ample room to experiment, explore and improvise through the use of granular synthesis, a pedal that generates live recordings and spits them out in random, surprising ways, a loop pedal, the soprano flute and my own voice."
Ai fen