BLAK SAGAAN
territory ︎︎︎ EU / UK | agent: federico@hangarbooking.com
In an age that demands hyper acceleration, kinetic flashes and byte voracity, Blak Saagan sticks out like a sore thumb with a sprawling body of work that requires attention and unlocks profound symbols
and meaning with every passage. After a 5 year gap, the Venetian composer returns with his most personal and openly political statement yet,
‘Un Sequestro Lungo 10.000 Anni’, a staggering 108 minute triple album soundtracking a dystopian city through flashes of futuristic fourth world visions, warehouse 80s rave-ups, meditative trance and dark rumblings.
Following his acclaimed ‘Se Ci Fosse La Luce Sarebbe Bellissimo’ was never going to be an easy feat but Samuele Gottardello (Blak Saagan) approached the fresh canvas with a renewed sense of
commitment sparking a dense parallel world inhabited by paranoia, control and repression. A world that is relieved by the figure of a woman with the body of a bird emerging from the asphalt and freeing
humanity from the “sequestro” (kidnapping) to which it has long been subjected. Dystopia pushed to the limits and sadly close to our current affairs.
Stemming from a collaboration with Iranian illustrator Majid Bita, ‘Un Sequestro Lungo 10.000 Anni’ narrates a city populated with imaginary creatures bustling to the rhythms of Iranian punk, rebels with mullets sweating through Middle Eastern hallucinatory disco beats, propaganda VHS tapes and Saagan’s usual atmospheric celestiality built on library music, kosmische architectures and industrial serenity.
Referencing the ecosystem that Marija Gimbutas and Philip K. Dick handed down to us, Blak Saagan’s music threads the needle hypnotically moving from Carpenter synth worship, the anxiogenic
cyber-pulsating ‘The Blak Fire’ or the persian EDM of ‘Idoli Rotti fatti di Paura ed Oro’, to metaphysical experimentations that recall the work of legendary Italian sound architects Egisto
Macchi and Nora Orlandi, the bouncing astral esoteric ‘La Dama con il Corpo di Uccello’ and the spiritual cadence of ‘Mila nel bosco’. The authoritarian climax of the album is fully delivered on tracks
like ‘Il Giorno di Zaha'kol’ and ‘Daēvā - Falso Dio’ where pounding severity reaches the textural punishment of heavy-hitters like Godflesh and Ramleh, industrial malaise for the masses.
‘Un Sequestro Lungo 10.000 Anni’ is also the first Blak Saagan album to feature vocal contributions, heightening the cinematic experience and carrying it spiritually. Ambient-folk goddess
Julinko brings an elysian quality to ‘Il Giorno di Zaha'kol’, the submerged vocals of techno produce Annalisa Iembo (Jerome) are printed on the drugged out coldwave hit ‘Benzocrazia’, Italian illustrator Liz Van Der Nüll posse-raps on the synth-punk siren blaring ‘FRREPa’ while cosmic loner James Jonathan Clancy ethereally closes ‘Idoli Rotti fatti di Paura ed Oro’.
‘Un Sequestro Lungo 10.000 Anni’ plays like a puzzle where every piece eerily discloses a historical
metaphor, a captivating voyage where Blak Saagan’s time machine crosses 10,000 years of patriarchy, monotheism, colonialism and capitalism, denouncing a cruel present, while remembering a
gloomy past. Some might call it conscious escapism or spiritual socialism, some might see it a evoking a new realm, a path trailblazed by outsiders like David Sylvian, Muslimgauze and Chrome... painting a black horizon from which, perhaps, hope can still emerge.
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FB / IG / SPOTIFY
JAKOJAKO
Territory ︎︎︎ ITALY | AGENT: jacopo@hangabrooking.com
It all started with an urge to play with sound and a desire to know more. After several years buried in books, manuals,
patch cables and messing with a DIY synth, JakoJako
(real name Sibel Koçer) was playing her first live sets in Berlin, spending every spare cent on Eurorack modules.
The passion soon became all-consuming, and in 2017 she left her nursing career to work at Berlin’s synth shop institution SchneidersLaden.
Here she’s been
sharing her grasp of tools and techniques with the
city’s music maker community.
Technique is no use without ideas to apply it to – fortunately JakoJako has a natural curiosity. “When you hear a sound in an environment, say a car passing by, you don’t appreciate the complexity until you think how you might synthesise it,” JakoJako explains.
“Then it becomes something abstract; a collection of modulated pitches and timbres. I love to listen to the world like this.”
Her approach may seem studious, but JakoJako uses this fluency in the language of sound to convey emotion. Each track is an experiment, with success based on the intensity of feeling it creates. Her EPs Aequilibration and Lux showcased this explorative
mindset, with very different stylistic ideas tied together through emotive sound design, sharp production, and a strong sense of melody.
With regular events disappearing in 2020, live music migrated to URL, finding a global audience in shared experience of isolation.
After streaming a live set with HÖR she was
invited to join ARTE, Innervisions and United We Stream alongside Âme and Frank Wiedermann.
This led to a filmed live performance in her studio for FACT Magazine’s Patch Notes series and an in-depth studio feature for Electronic Beats, which together
amassed over a million views (and counting). More recently, she’s followed up with live performances with Annalise van Even aka Nana at Superbooth and Kraftwerk Berlin.
IRL JakoJako has made good use of studio time: she's contributed tracks to compilations
on BPitch Control, Tresor and Figure as well as remixing crouds, New Order and Martin Gore.
More new music by Berghain’s resident is imminent in 2022, with new albums on Bigamo Musik and WSNWG plus a novamute EP. JakoJako’s future, it seems, is akin to modular synthesis: sonically endless, full of opportunity, with boundaries yet to be
pushed.
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