Music
Meet KOAN Sound, one of the benevolent acts involved in Inspected Records’ charity single Cascade
Earlier this year UK label Inspected Records roped in four artists to hit Red Bull Studios London and record a song for prostate cancer charity Movember. What Culprate, Asa, Reso, and the OWSLA-affiliated KOAN Sound knocked together was the glitch-infused Cascade, which has been played 80,000-plus times on SoundCloud since release. Click here to listen to Cascade and donate some hard-earned coin.
The track follows in the wake of KOAN Sound and Asa’s big-selling Sanctuary EP, which topped the Beatport Chart and climbed to the upper regions of the iTunes Charts in Canada, the US and UK. Now’s as good a time as any, then, to get to know KOAN Sound.
Your music has been described as many things including liquid dubstep; how would you describe it? "360-degree glitch-flip Mctwist."
Where does the recent ambient influence come from? "A big part of that has been living with Asa, since about 18 months ago. His most obvious musical influences are artists like Burial and Sigur Rós, along with a load of other ambient producers. So that has impacted what we listen to when we’re hanging out. We’ve worked together in the past so it made sense to dedicate time towards a larger scale project once we were all under one roof, which led to our Sanctuary EP."
What glitch-employing artists are you influenced by? "One of the first glitch-based albums we heard was edIT’s Crying Over Pros For No Reason, as well as a fair amount of Tipper’s music, from his earlier down-tempo stuff all the way to his dancefloor material. Also a load of other producers who use crazy drum edits: Venetian Snares, Squarepusher. We’ve never considered ourselves glitch-hop – our music doesn’t really use any of the techniques traditionally associated with that sound. It was just a label applied to us once we started mucking around with different tempos."
Is your interest in Buddhism restricted to your name alone? "We chose the name because we were interested in the concept – as a means of challenging preconceived ideas about art, philosophy, logic or whatever – as opposed to having a direct or personal link to Buddhism. The origin of the word Koan is obviously primarily religious, but I think it’s more relevant to view it as a philosophical instrument or tool outside of any specific doctrine. It would be pretty pretentious to say we work an idea such as that into our tunes, but we do hope to challenge people’s notions of what music can be, and hopefully force people out of their comfort zones once in a while."
The Bristol scene is vibrant now – who should we be listening to? "It’s been a cool year for living in Bristol and quite a few of the producers we share a production ethos with have ended up moving here from all over the country. Culprate and Asa you’ll already know, but there’s also Kursa, Rezaloot and Sorrow – we can’t forget the Weston Super Mare massive. There’s been a fairly big grime resurgence here recently, spearheaded by Kahn and others, which is really refreshing."
Are your fellow Cascade artists kindred spirits? "We were a family of naked mole rats in a previous life."
What else should we know about KOAN Sound? "Growing up this was our favourite song."
