Kozhikode hosts unique ambient music event, Listening State: Vol 1
“A bunch of ambient music artistes from different parts of the world will gather in Kozhikode today for the debut edition of Listening State, an ambient music festival showcasing a new acoustic experience in Kerala.
Founded by electronic musician and experimental music enthusiast Wasim Kozhikode, whose ambient electronic music project Sacred Seeds, has performed at renowned festivals such as Magnetic Fields, Hilltop Festival, and Bloom in Green, Listening State opens the doors to an alternative sound culture.
It is being presented in collaboration with Utopian Dystopia, a pioneering art and music platform known for bridging creative disciplines and cultivating independent cultural movements across Kerala.
A niche genre, ambient music makers create an environmental soundscape, layering textures of sound to offer a deep listening experience. Conceived as a platform for experimental and exploratory music, the idea is to build a community that listens deeply, says Nisham Husain, founder of Utopian Dystopia. “The event brings together talented ambient musicians, who have been creating deeply inspiring soundverses and an informed audience that has been following ambient music,” Nisham adds.
A community-driven initiative, each volume of Listening State would present live electronic acts, sound artists, and improvisers who approach music as cultural exploration. The project exists to build a thoughtful audience for exploratory sound and to nurture collaboration across disciplines of art, technology, and design.
Apart from Wasim of Sacred Seeds, whose music blends synthesis, field recordings, and experimental sound design, the event features Atomic Phantom, founded by Japanese artist, designer and composer Jyoti Naoki Eri, based in Auroville. He has nine ambient albums to his credit and founded his own music label, Nādāsana, in 2022. Bufogaudi, an electronic music project of Oman-based artist Zeyad, co-founder of After 12 Collective, a key group in Oman’s experimental music scene, whose sound bridges ambient atmospheres with intricate rhythmic work.”
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La Revue d’Auroville – An Interview (French)
Kyodo News (1/1/2024)
Yahoo News 4/3/2024
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/e2caf4b1dbfe68cba65d54bf303aae26741a6c8e
Music Plus+ Article [India]
An Article on AV Art Service [India]
A compilation album of 11 artists curated by Jyoti Naoki Eri
Literary concepts are extraordinarily difficult to translate into visual art, let alone music. Expounding on a verbal concept with more words at least gives the writer some room to move, even if this space is arguably imaginary; but transplanting said space to a different medium suddenly makes one’s frame of reference extraordinarily small- how to narrate without speaking?
Science-fiction has helped to bridge the gap before (some of Phillip K. Dick’s or Burroughs’ alternate realities now tend to seem hocked together from everything humanity has tried to forget), and it continues to help push artistic boundaries in unexpected ways, as evidenced by Japanese Aurovilian artist and label-founder Jyoti Naoki Eri’s new compilation ‘Inter-Galactic Sonar Probe Vol. 1’. Featuring contributions from worldwide artists such as Psychopanda and Matt Black, the album is centred around the fictional concept of music being used as a form of sonic communication on a joyride to Andromeda eighty years in the future. Using a minimal range of textures, the result is something akin to music you can read, the unspoken words abstractly comforting… Something you might try and beam out to other life forms just for general reassurance.
“No worries, just passing through…”
This is consequently not the sort of music that can be easily written about analytically.
Track 1- Looking for Something // Strangebird~Sounds [BEL]
[Stangebird~Sounds is a Belgian, Antwerp-based sound artist and musician]
Abstract comfort is the keyword here. Building up from the void, the only recognizable melody comes in the form of a narrow tonal centre that steamrollers steadily on until it takes over the space a written melody might occupy. Blips and bleeps that sound like a kid’s synth routed through a ring modulator and sequencer, something oddly disquieting about the familiarity of these sounds, the slightly fuzzed-out bells that ring in your inner ear.
Can something be truly harsh yet comforting?
Image of a NASA skyscraper drifting sleepily past Neptune, lights in the windows winking off and on… Sonic invitations to the Waldorf-Astoria. Strange bird indeed.
Listen to the track here: https://nadasana.bandcamp.com/track/looking-for-something-strangebird-sounds-bel
Submitted by Dhani Muniz
Article: MixMag Asia [HK]
Nādāsana is a new record label out of Auroville — the government-free township started by yogis and spiritual gurus Mirra Alfassa and Sri Aurobindo, and which is located partly in the state of Tamil Nadu and partly in the Union Territory of Pondicherry in India.
The label’s first release, ‘Inter-Galactic Sonor Communication Probe Vol.1’ is a conceptual output curated by label founder Jyoti Naoki Eri, and features ambient and experimental works from around the world.
The concept follows NASA’s Voyager project led by Carl Sagan on a sonic space probe mission to Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy, which is approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth and the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way. Jyoti’s goal is to use this ambient curation “to establish contact with sensory conscious beings in outer space through sounds created on planet Earth.”
The release title resonates with the interstellar beliefs of Auroville residents and followers, who reside around the giant golden geodesic dome known as the “Matrimandir. It’s an awe-inspiring structure that exudes a cosmic presence, almost like a golden UFO waiting to take off. Essentially, it’s just a yoga hall, but in line with Nādāsana’s first release, we can pretend for a moment otherwise.
