Fia Fiell is the moniker of Vietnamese-Australian synthesist, pianist and composer Carolyn Schofield, born and based in Melbourne/Narrm. She performs as a keyboardist on multiple synthesisers, playing and processing them in real time to create dreamlike and unsettling sonic worlds that meld lush melodic cycles, vibrant digital textures and soaring drones.

Schofield’s distinctive and versatile approach has made her sought-after performer in the realms of electronic music, experimental, rock and beyond: she’s played synths with beloved Australian artists Bernard Fanning and Paul Dempsey, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Jonnine Standish of HTRK, Jaala and more; toured Europe, the UK and the USA; and performed prolifically in Melbourne and Australia for Dark Mofo, Rising Festival, MPavilion, Phoenix Central Park, Inner Varnika, and more. Her solo, ensemble and spatial works have been commissioned by Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio, the Australian Art Orchestra, Melbourne Recital Centre, the Australian National Academy of Music and Play On.

As a soloist, Fia Fiell’s tactile, intricate and improvisatory compositions for multiple keyboard synths derive from meditations on deep listening, growth and transcendence. Silk-gentle and immensely powerful, the sound worlds she creates seem to spirit-forth from immaterial planes – bathing audiences in a nebulous melange of lush melodic cycles and spectral drones. Time and rhythm are approached as if elastic – like an organic membrane breathing and pulsing autonomically.

Her recent deep listening work for Longform Editions, ‘Endless Filament’, presents a distinctive and dynamic approach to drone music through a constant flowing, unfurling and building of tones and subtle melodies; an approach that contrasts with the lo-fi improvisatory and cyclic melodic language of her debut album ‘All In The Same Room’ – described in Bandcamp’s Best Cassette Releases of 2018 as coming ‘awfully close to perfection’.