‘Hoya’, the first collaborative record from Fhunyue Gao and Sven Kacirek, is a site of encounters. There’s the encounter between two different media and artistic conceptions: Gao, on the one hand, a stage director | performer | musician based in Switzerland, a frequent collaborator of Annalena Fröhlich’s, Thom Luz’s and many others, who works for a most colourful variety of venues all over Europe and is a member of the music association Bongo Joe. Kacirek, on the other, an established musician living between Hamburg and Kenya, with several releases on labels such as Honest Jon’s and Bureau B under his belt and an equally illustrious and diverse list of collaborators, among them Shabaka Hutchings, Ogoya Nengo, Marc Ribot, John McEntire, Hauschka and Nils Frahm.

What began with a chance encounter while working together on a dance project in the Netherlands, quickly became clear to the two of them as a shared musical sensitivity demanding further exploration. At the center of this stood an encounter between their instruments and the different modes of expression they afford: playing combinations of marimbas, drums, percussions, electronics, theremin, Buchla synthesizer, and piano, off-rehearsal sessions during Gao’s and Kacirek’s subsequent collaborations for theater continually grew in importance for the two of them.

When they decided to elaborate these explorations in a project entirely their own, the two of them locked themselves into Kacirek’s studio at Jaffestrasse in Hamburg, and started working on »Hoya«. Over the course of the LP’s 40-minute runtime, what once began as an unlikely meeting is presented as a playful, unpredictable, yet deeply developed and substantial affair. Sublime, ethereal layers of synth and theremin are counterpoised by delicate and shifty bouts of percussion. A labor of love that truly stands on its own.

Hoya is out on January 21, 2022

Video by Annalena Fröhlich
Starring Fhunyue Gao and Annalena Fröhlich

Additional footage of the astronaut scene by Diego Moscoso and Yannick Mosimann