We’ve been really bowled over by this incredible work by Berlin-based, Taiwanese musician SABIWA who merges traditional Taiwanese folk music with strange electronics and aspects of musique concréte. The vocals on this piece ‘Christal’ are incredible, and come from her uncle, who’s singing a song about Taiwanese independence. We love the way the background vocals and treated organic instrumentation creep in and take over. It’s really beautiful. Elsewhere she uses her own voice, obscuring and merging field recordings and electronics into a unique and intimate soundscape that feels part ritualistic part abstract experimentalism. It’s really something special.
It comes from something of a concept album, No.16 – Memories of Future Landscapes.
This is what she has to say about it:
“In this future “we no longer have gender. Oneself is already a whole. We also no longer use spoken language to communicate. We no longer have a concept of family. Population density is controlled by nature. We produce the next generation like butterflies. We are no longer limited as mammals. We mix DNA with animals. We are born in a form in which we can survive independently as insects and then we become pupae as butterflies and transform to other forms.”
No. 16 – Memories of Future Landscapes, is out now out via Phantom Limb. You can find it here.
