Ohka

Ohka is the first full length solo recording by Isambard Khroustaliov and documents five key pieces which chart the various converging practices that have shaped and informed his musical perspective; from his continuing work with the electronic group Icarus and time spent as a resident composer at IRCAM, to his involvement in improvised music and work for film and animation. Positioned somewhere between the fictional abandon of a mashup and the contemplated purposefulness of contemporary composed music; Ohka is a uniquely bold musical statement where acoustic instruments, performance and instrumentalism are taken apart, mutated, and reassembled in an electronic zeitgeist of their former selves, in which disjunction and fracture serve as the only concrete musical guides. Over five years in the making, it is an album that not only documents the author’s struggle with the progressive riddle of our contemporary musical climate but also restlessly leaves no stone unturned in the pursuit of its discourse; from the opening utopianism of Ping via the deconstruction of Aporia to the psychosis of Traum, the post-modern lament of Junkspace and the schizophrenic euphoria of Ohka itself, it is an album whose density and attention to detail make enormous demands on the listener and reward in equal measure.