Ollie Olsen

Ollie Olsen is an Australian experimental musician and electronic producer whose career has zigzagged through post-punk, industrial, and avant-garde electronica since the late 1970s. Emerging from Melbourne’s gritty underground scene, he co-founded the art-punk band Whirlywirld and later collaborated with Rowland S. Howard (The Birthday Party) in the noise project No. By the late ’80s, Olsen dove headfirst into electronic experimentation, co-founding the industrial-techno project Third Eye with Marie Hoy and famously teaming up with INXS’s Michael Hutchence for the genre-blurring side project Max Q.

Decades later, Olsen’s still bending circuits and breaking rules. Recent releases like *Cognitive Distortions*, *Posthuman*, and *Circuit Melt* showcase his knack for glitchy textures, dystopian themes, and hypnotic rhythms, while live recordings like *Live In Japan September 2000* prove his relentless energy onstage. Whether he’s warping traditional instruments (see *Taishōgoto x 10*) or diving into noise abstraction, Olsen remains a restless pioneer—a guy who’d rather melt a synthesizer than play it safe.