Pioneering post-punk and electronic musician, DJ, sound designer and producer Ollie Olsen died on Wednesday (16 October) after losing his battle with the rare neurological condition, multiple system atrophy. He was 66.
Olsen, an eclectic, talented, collaborative and much-admired artist, “fought long and hard like the Viking he was against multiple system atrophy since 2019 when he first began to have symptoms,” according to a post shared on his Instagram page this week.
He died “peacefully in his sleep … under the care of The Royal Melbourne Hospital with his wife Jayne at his side,” the social media post stated.
Olsen, born Ian Christopher Olsen in February 1958 before legally changing his name in the 1990s, was due to be inducted into the Music Victoria Hall of Fame next week.
He will now be inducted posthumously on Thursday 24 October, with the ceremony to be streamed live online.
“We have been overwhelmed with calls for Ollie’s induction dating back many years, there is no doubt he is easily the people’s choice for a Hall of Fame induction. He is a true artist and visionary in every sense of the word, consistently forging his own path, delivering groundbreaking sounds with each new decade, influencing generations of musicians, and we’re proud to celebrate his enduring legacy,” read a Music Victoria statement when Olsen’s impending Hall of Fame induction was announced on 9 October.
In a follow-up post this week, a Music Victoria spokesperson said Olsen’s “unwavering commitment to uplifting those around him distinguished him among his peers, enriching our lives and inspiring countless individuals in the industry”.
“Honouring Ollie with a place in the Music Victoria Hall of Fame underscores his lasting impact on us all.”
Olsen, whose collaborators over the years included everyone from underground artists to pop and rock stars such as the late Michael Hutchence and U2’s Bono and The Edge, first came to prominence in Melbourne’s punk and post-punk scenes in the 1970s.
It was a milieu he would later help memorialise in Richard Lowenstein’s 1986 film Dogs in Space, on which Olsen worked as music director, supervising the recordings of artists from the vibrant ‘the Little Band scene’ of the late 1970s, including his own track, ‘Win/Lose’.
Other films Olsen worked on included Head On, Anna Kokkinos’ 1998 feature based on the Christos Tsiolkas novel Loaded, for which he composed the original music (with his work nominated for Best Original Music Score at the Australian Film Institute Awards in 1998) and Sean Byrne’s 2009 horror film The Loved Ones, the soundtrack of which featured Olsen’s track ‘Mirror Ball Of Death’.
Honouring a trailblazer
From the short-lived punk band The Young Charlatans (1977-78), whose members also included the late, greatly respected guitarist Rowland S Howard (The Boys Next Door/The Birthday Party), to post-punk acts like Whirlywirld, which saw Olsen introduce synthesisers to his musical repertoire, he was always at the forefront of musical trends. This included playing a key role in popularising trance, ambient techno and other forms of electronic dance music in Melbourne with his band Third Eye (whose best-known track ‘The Real Thing’ was a cover of the 1969 track by Russell Morris) and through the record label, Psy-Harmonics.
Olsen described making electronic music as “painting with sound” in a 2023 interview with the Australian Music Vault, crediting his 1975 teacher, the avant-garde composer Felix Werder, for inspiring him.
Without Werder’s influence, Olsen may have become a visual artist, he said: “I mean, once I got into electronic music, that’s painting with sound. So I didn’t see any point in being a painter anymore. I just wanted to do sound.”
Olsen’s eclectic career also included the one-off band Max Q, a musical collaboration with Michael Hutchence, whose self-titled 1989 album went gold in Australia and, more recently, the experimental drone outfit Taipan Tiger Girls, which he formed in 2014.
Olsen officially retired from making music in 2019. He is remembered as an innovative, endlessly curious artist, an active and engaged listener, a great collaborator and a trailblazer, compassionate and caring.
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This writer fondly remembers discussing a love of the Beat Generation writers with Olsen in 2011, and complaining that it was proving impossible to find a copy of the short film Pull My Daisy (1959), adapted by Jack Kerouac from his play of the same name and directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie.
A few weeks later, Ollie sent me a copy of the film in question, having tracked it down through his vast network of friends – that was the sort of kind and thoughtful man he was.
Olsen’s wife Jayne wrote on Facebook earlier this week: “Thank you to everyone who has supported Ollie and me over the years. He is at peace now and no longer in pain.”
ArtsHub readers wishing to support Jayne with Ollie Olsen’s funeral costs can donate through the official Support Act ‘Help a Mate’ fundraiser.
