The experimental noise and voice duo share a DIY video from their new collaborative album Lightkeeper
“The latest release from Slumberland (aka Belgian producer and instrument builder Jochem Baelus) features [Sainkho] Namtchylak in a co-headlining role,” writes Rosie Esther Solomon in their review of the duo’s album Lightkeeper in The Wire 467, “her vocals weaving their way between the hand built instruments, stirring a pot that simmers on the brink of noise, threatening to boil over.”
Though Lightkeeper is their first collaboration, both Slumberland and Namtchylak have been active forward-thinking noise makers for many years. Namtchylak, who explores the traditional throat singing style of her birthplace Tuva – an autonomous Russian republic north of Mongolia – in new improvising and songwriting settings, released her first solo album Lost Rivers in 1991, and Baelus has built new instruments for his productions under the Slumberland alias since 2013.
Filmed by Baelus on the remote North Atlantic volcanic island Terceira, the video collages imagery from the Azores landscape to focus the tension-building energy of the album's lead single “Zarja Zakat Zarja”.
Co-produced by Baelus and Radwan Ghazi Moumneh of Jerusalem In My Heart, Lightkeeper is released by Morphine.
Read Rosie Esther Solomon’s review in full in The Wire 467. Wire subscribers can also read the review in full online via the magazine’s online library, as well as Phil England’s 2000 interview with Namtchylak in The Wire 201.
