Loud Sounds 18
Cover photo: qaynar
"Loud Sounds" are some of the best new tracks we've found. We are coming back with the eighteenth installment of the series.
qaynar – Alt.Ay
qaynar is a multi-genre band from Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia. qaynar members view themselves not as a band but as a "musical laboratory". Until 2021 all of their songs were sung in Tatar, the native language of Radif, the group's charismatic frontman. It changed with Alt.Ay EP. The lead vocals were overtaken by Bayaru Takshina who wrote two songs in her native Altai language and arranged one traditional song. The tracks on Alt.Ay EP feel dark and magical. The songwriting is strong and the production is nuanced but leaves space for Bayaru's perfectly imperfect vocals to truly shine.
qaynar is a multi-genre band from Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia. qaynar members view themselves not as a band but as a "musical laboratory". Until 2021 all of their songs were sung in Tatar, the native language of Radif, the group's charismatic frontman. It changed with Alt.Ay EP. The lead vocals were overtaken by Bayaru Takshina who wrote two songs in her native Altai language and arranged one traditional song. The tracks on Alt.Ay EP feel dark and magical. The songwriting is strong and the production is nuanced but leaves space for Bayaru's perfectly imperfect vocals to truly shine.
Bayaru Takshina
[qaynar member] Radif once said, "We're a multinational band. Let's write a song that's not in Tatar". The same evening I sketched the skeleton of the first song in Ableton Live, along with the vocal part and sent it to the band. The next evening I sent them the second song and on the third day the third song. There was essentially a finished form and everyone added their own sounds, their own vision. In Chogodogon, Radif clearly said that the end would be Dubstep. At Enirler, Seryozha fought with us so that we wouldn't load the track's transparent texture with sounds. Sasha was finding cool electronic noises on his synth. And I sang. I always dreamed of singing this kind of music with talented guys.
Central Spark – Becoming Goliath
Central Spark is an alias of Karsten Osterby, a musician and sound artist residing in Los Angeles. Karsten's background in classical and improvisational music along with work in sound studies and audio technologies helps him "explore where the boundaries of experimental music overlap with club culture and conceptual media art" (our guess is he explores the same boundaries with his perfectly goofy Instagram page). On Becoming Goliath and the rest of the Artemis EP Karsten tries his hand at "traditional songwriting". However he buries his sweet melodies in beautiful and confusing layers of free-flowing synths, sound effects and deconstructed hang drum samples. The sound labyrinths are equally engaging and confusing and the lyrics are not always intelligible, but this adds nicely to the overall kaleidoscopic impression.
Central Spark is an alias of Karsten Osterby, a musician and sound artist residing in Los Angeles. Karsten's background in classical and improvisational music along with work in sound studies and audio technologies helps him "explore where the boundaries of experimental music overlap with club culture and conceptual media art" (our guess is he explores the same boundaries with his perfectly goofy Instagram page). On Becoming Goliath and the rest of the Artemis EP Karsten tries his hand at "traditional songwriting". However he buries his sweet melodies in beautiful and confusing layers of free-flowing synths, sound effects and deconstructed hang drum samples. The sound labyrinths are equally engaging and confusing and the lyrics are not always intelligible, but this adds nicely to the overall kaleidoscopic impression.
Karsten Osterby
This song, along with the others from the Artemis EP, was written on my piano at home in early 2021. This release is a big departure from most of my other work. Traditional lyric-based songwriting is not my usual mode of composition, but early 2021 allowed me the chance to sit at the piano quite a bit, so I embraced that creative process. This period was brief and seemed fairly open and shut, as I had moved on to several other projects by springtime. However, something about the songs kept itching at me, and last Fall I decided to reinvest in them and flesh them out into fuller works. For this song, an early demo I put to tape was just a drum machine, keyboard, and my vocals processed through a pitch shifter. Though the final arrangement grew significantly, the sound of that first small demo was very much the aesthetic roadmap. The lyrics were mostly inspired by the powerful experiences I had in the giant Sequoia groves in the Sierra Nevadas of California. Hopefully they situate the listener in a kind of amorphous and sensual experience of bodily transformation.