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Follow on Google News | K-SPACE group release first CD that plays differently every time.A new, revolutionary album which is different every time you play it has been released by K-Space – Gendos Chamzyryn, Ken Hyder and Tim Hodgkinson.
By: K-Space INFINITY by K-Space : Catalogue no: Ad Hoc 21 Label: www.adhocrecords.com/ UK distributor: A new, revolutionary album which is different every time you play it has been released by K-Space – Gendos Chamzyryn, Ken Hyder and Tim Hodgkinson. At a time when the music industry is making a dramatic shift from CDs to downloads, K-Space’s Infinity presents a different option. First of all, this disk plays on a computer, not a CD player. And this is a whole piece of work - you can't download tracks from it. In fact the disk contains software that performs the 'pieces' on the album differently every time you play them. These performances are in no way random and this has nothing to do with shuffle-culture. The software is specially programmed to make choices from the available material. Furthermore you can't pause or fast-forward this album: the music is indivisible, and you can only turn it on or turn it off. In fact everything that happens is there to create a special listening experience... Faust's Jean-Hervé Peron says: "Great great piece of work on the musical/spiritual level as well as this very ingenIous technological twist: you buy one cd and you get x-times the length of always good music ! A genius strike ! And magic... it is always new... I was UP UP AND AWAY !!" Infinity is the next step forwards in the K-Space journey into recording. Their previous CD – Going Up – built soundscapes from performances recorded in different places in Siberia and Europe, in studios, in concert, and in outdoor events, including shaman rituals. Recordings sometimes years apart were superimposed. The sensation for the listener was of being in one space which encompassed different locations and different moments in time. The Wire magazine noted: “Going Up layers episodes of instrumental, vocal and environmental sound activity to induce states of listening that don’t merely involve expectations being met. It creates its own contexts, shifting shape, juggling time, volatile with details realigning on each listen. And it carries the imprint of a lived world that admits fascination as well as intensity of physical experience. “Far removed from the weightlessness of World Music impressionism and the sham of New Age flotsam, Going Up, as Hyder rightly observes, approaches the condition of ‘total music’. The crucial thing is to hear and feel it. It’s made for those of us who want listening to remain a real adventure and an ongoing process of discovery.” Infinity is the next stage on this journey - all the listener has to do is press “PLAY” or “STOP”. Each play lasts about 20 minutes. We chose this time span thinking of the shamans of Tuva - Gendos' home - and how an outwardly similar ritual produces a different journey for the shaman each time. And that 20 minute period of intense music gets away from the 40/50/60/70 minute plus usually associated with CDs. But of course with Infinity, the listener is dealing with infinite variations ….. hours and hours of music. The album also contains videos, pix and extended sleevenotes. K-Space Background K-Space is the spiritual, musical and artistic fruition of a long and vivid encounter with the cultures of southern Siberia. An insistence on cultural and musical difference based on respect and shared philosophy. A band that pushes the boundary of what such a collaboration can mean. Gendos Chamzyryn, an original member of the ground-breaking Biosintes group, is one of the most astounding performers of the music of Tuva, recognised as shaman-artist by the foremost Tuvan society of shamans, master of the Kargiraa throat-singing style, and maker of traditional stone carvings. He has recorded and toured with Sainkho Namtchylak, and released two solo albums. Hodgkinson is a composer and musician involved in an enormous range of projects. He played alto saxophone with God, and now plays lapsteel guitar with the Konk Pack trio and bass clarinet with Iancu Dumitrescu's Hyperion Ensemble. His pieces were featured at last year's Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Hyder has drummed with South African, Brazilian and Celtic folk musicians and with Japanese and Tibetan Buddhist monks. He currently plays in duos with Scottish singer, Maggie Nicols, saxophonists Geoff Hearn and Ray MacDonald, US bassist Scipio and Russian pianist, Vladimir Miller. He also plays shamanic percussion with RealTime with US percussionist z'ev, trumpeter Andy Knight and Scipio; and with Raz3 with Lu Edmonds, cembush, and Tim Hodgkinson, reeds. The origins of K-Space lie in a series of trips to Siberia undertaken by Hodgkinson and Hyder from 1990 onwards. They aimed to explore what shamanism could mean for contemporary music performance. Before joining up with Chamzyryn, they worked with Sainkho Namtchylak and Yat Kha from Tuva, Bolot Biryshev from the Altai, and Anatoly Kokov from Khakassia. It was Sainkho who first invited them to Tuva, where they quickly met a number of people who would become very important for their future music-making. They made friends with the musicians of Biosintes – a kind of Tuvan Sun Ra band which included Gendos Chamzyryn. They also met Mongush Kenin-Lopsan - an anthropologist who later kick-started the public re-emergence of shamans, and who would soon afterwards set up the Dungur association of shamans. And in the south of Tuva they met the lama Kungaa Tash-Ool Buu. Although they didn’t know it at the time, Kungaa had been a shaman in secret for 30 years. Over the next few years their tours of Siberia became field trips for studying both the music and the shamanic practices of the region with shamans including Nikolai Michailov and Yeremi Hagayev from west Baikal, Kungaa, Dopshun Kara-Ool and the late Makar-Ool from Tuva, and with Kenin Lopsan. In 1996 they played for the first time as a trio with Gendos, and K-Space was born. The band takes the name from Nikolai Kozyrev, the Russian astro-physicist. Kozyrev believed that time was a conduit for energy and built a machine known as Kozyrev’s Mirrors which Hodgkinson and Hyder had seen in Akademgorodok, Siberia's science city. When they suggested the name to Chamzyryn, he pointed out that 'K' in Russian means 'towards', giving the idea of opening out towards the cosmos. And this is what K-Space music is all about. RELATED DISCOGRAPHY * Shams: * The Goose: Hodgkinson/Hyder/ * The First Take: Biosintes w. Gendos Chamzyryn, FMP (1996) * Burghan Interference: * Shizo i.d.: Gen-Dos - Chamzyryn, Revival of the Computer (Tuva) (2001) * Bear Bones: K-Space - Hodgkinson / Hyder / Chamzyryn, Slam (2002) * Kamlaniye: * Shaman Tree: Gendos Chamzyryn, Luna Music (Poland) (2005) * Going Up: K-Space - Hodgkinson / Hyder / Chamzyryn, Ad Hoc (2005) * Vocal Evocations: Chyskyyrai: with Hodgkinson / Hyder & others, SOASIS (2008) http://www.myspace.com/ Ken Hyder and Tim Hodgkinson are available to do emailed interviews – ken@hyder.demon.co.uk timpragma@googlemail.com # # # K-Space is a transcultural project engaging with southern Siberian cultures, primarily Tuva. The main output is recorded music and live performance. The name, inspired by soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kozyrev, suggests 'opening out towards the cosmos'. End
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