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Kink Gong

03/07/2017Laurent Jeanneau Releases A Fascinating Collage Of Tibetan Buddhist Rites
 

What on earth did we just listen to?! Released in May on French independent label Akuphone, specializing on "rare global pop and folk music from the early 1950's to the late 1980's", the imprint itself simply describes this one-of-a-kind acoustic display as a "puzzling collage of Tibetan Buddhist rites". What we have here is a departure into the realm of ritual and ceremonial music by a certain Kink Gong, aka Laurent Jeanneau, "a nomadic musician and DIY ethnographer". Jeanneau combines his studies of ethnic minorities, particularly from South East Asia, with electroacoustic experiments. Recorded in Tibet and Yunnan (China) between 2006 & 2013 and recomposed in Berlin in 2016, Kink Gong's latest feat reconstructs a vast collection of field recordings, Buddhist chants, psalmody, small bells, big cymbals, horns, gongs and drums to hypnotising effect, thus paving the way to a mystical state of trance. His "Tibetan Buddhism Trip" comprises two twenty-minute tracks, innovative soundscapes drawing from the unknown to reveal the fascinating. Stream in full / order here.

AUTHOR: Lev Nordstrom