Ayankoko

REVIEWS

Ayankoko – Rotten Faster [Ayan Records]

IDM, REVIEWS Ayan Records, Ayankoko

To describe the musical style of David Vilayleck, known artistically as Ayankoko, we must think of a highly electronic and advanced sound. His work is based on experimentation and musical research through evolved software that mainly combines Ableton Live with Max/MSP. This tool, created explicitly for the improvised and personalised development of each user, has unlimited options that Vilayleck himself guts to create all kinds of atmospheres.

His most common style is based on complex compositions, with an abstract sound design and thousands of elements that he twists until they lose their essential properties. Rotten Faster, the French producer’s latest album, shows an equally experimental nature but, this time, adds rhythmic components.

Weird and Dark opens this eight-track with a polyrhythmic structure, with many IDM details and a harmonic conjugation that could perfectly be classified as improvised jazz. With Master Roton, he once again displays an enormous dexterity in combining rhythmic elements at breakneck speed with the depth of a melody that tries to mitigate the great energy it gives off. Tree of Life sharpens the influence of genres such as funky and deep that are so characteristic of the French house scene, although Vilayleck moves it to an experimental setting. Bang Ya mixes the groove of a powerful bass with the dynamism of a percussive part that oscillates between drum’n bass and the tangled patterns of IDM.

Anemic Trees is the fifth cut on Rotten Faster and the most passive track, as the rhythm is not accentuated as in the rest of the tracks, as well as possessing a heavenly sonic nature. Seasonsored is completely rhythmic, and like Bang Ya, can be classified as an abstract adaptation of drum’n bass. Ayan Dub-Bod Mod 1 is another experimental jazz variant in which, in addition to the rhythm, there are up to five masterfully combined melodic lines divided between xylophone, viola, violin, bass and synthesised tones. Fziry Tale closes the album with a new rhythmic connection between percussion and various sounds that are harmonically executed in very broad tonalities.

Release date: April 26th, 2021.

Ayankoko

Khmu Thidin

Chinabot

“Khmuland,” the electrifying second track from Ayankoko’s Khmu Thidin, oozes more exuberance than any other track on the 67-minute album. Synthesizer progressions fit for alien joyrides glisten across a thumping drum beat, shining with neon-noir suaveness and funk. As the track progresses, Ayankoko further deconstructs the already-glitching beat into a shell of its former self—the danceable pulse stuttering and shambling into something more cerebral. The track’s real-time deconstruction stands as an explosion from which the remaining 19 cuts descend like individual shards, each one an unpredictable offshoot of Ayankoko’s greater vision. 

Many of Khmu Thidin’s 21 tracks do feel like blasts of errant molten rock—searching sound experiments and one-off statements running around two minutes or less. In these tracks lie Ayankoko’s noisiest outbursts (“Gravitational Waves” and the annihilating “Dead Zone”) and his most head-scratching guitar treatments (the scrawl of distorted plucking on “Lonely Rain”), as well as fragmented hints of the album’s more structured cuts (the shared acoustic fusion textures of “Lala Kondichi,” “Desert Storm” and the more expansive “Heartbeat”). Ayankoko reaches greater heights of cohesion elsewhere, but these bite-sized tracks act as sacrificial explorers battering away at boundaries to provide Khmu Thidin with as much creative space as possible. 

Interspersed between these flashes of experimentation stand longer, totem-like tracks that provide the album’s grandest statements. Though not wholly conventional, Khmu Thidin’s four-, five- and six-minute cuts do exude more control and intentional direction. The wide-eyed energy of “Chap”‘s breakbeat IDM undergoes endless rhythmic metamorphosis over its four-and-a-half minutes, while “Muang Xeun” drags a vocal sample through ghoulish effects for a lamenting, avant-electronic odyssey. Especially on the winding “Nobody” with saxophonist Klangbuero and vocalist Aude LP, Ayankoko imbues his music with a noticeable sense of stature. The track’s sputtering beat heaves like a beast in heat, tumbling along its distorted drums while Klangbuero spins circles of yarning sax improv around Aude LP’s revolutionary-leaning spoken word for an exhilarating splash of extended group improv.

Khmu Thidin may present itself as an unconquerable mess on the surface, but such a view negates both the intentional and seemingly subconscious cohesion at the heart of Ayankoko’s music. The producer laces this scattered collection with a handful of subtle calling cards—rockist grooves on “Khmuland” and “Don’t Forget the Pentatonics,” a hymnal-like approach to harmony on “Les voix célestes” and the calming closer “Skinny Cat,” a playful relationship with noise’s grandiosity on “Dude” and “Brain Sheep Frequency.” Within this labyrinthine album sit certain signposts and territorial markings, as if the artist can point to a distinct patch of goo in a sea of orange, pink, green and purple blobs and firmly state “that one’s mine.” –Audrey Lockie

“HAILING FROM LAO IS ‘AYANKOKO’ WHO MANAGES TO BRING THE CLASSICALLY FOLKISH PSYCHEDELIC CULTURE ROCK TO THE MODERN WORLD, CREATING A SUPERB CLASS OF ELECTRONIC CUT-UP MATERIAL AND TRADITIONALISM THAT FEELS SUPER TRIPPY. A RHYTHMIC FEST WITH MELLOWNESS AND EXCITEMENT AT THE SAME TIME!”

By Yeah I know it sucks

Ayankoko – KIA SAO ກ້ຽວສາວ

Genre: Molam, IDM

Favorite Tracks: “Kia Sao,” “South East II,” “Pambuko Reakt,” “Downsides,” “Tebu Sauyun”

If the album cover above didn’t clue you in, KIA SAO ກ້ຽວສາວ is the most uniquely vibrant record you’ll hear this year. Ranging from jazz to noise to breakbeats, French-Laotian multi-instrumentalist and composer David Somphrachanh Vilayleck’s latest effort runs the gamut in ways that feel impossible. The back-to-back combo of “Trytones” and “Jette” sound like the world’s weirdest jazz artist and the world’s strangest synth noodler were told to go haywire, and yet the two are perfect complements. As if this wasn’t impressive enough, Vilayleck immediately drops an 11-minute hammer, “Downsides,” that pulls together rubbery percussion and crystal clear electronics spliced through a sinister cloud of atmospheric noise. Not a second is wasted as the track seamlessly blooms and retreats like a tide in the dead of night. His arrangements are a delicious blend of oil and water, like the title track, a harshly sweet intro akin to chewing glass covered in the sweetest sugar known to man. “Kia Sao” doesn’t last the length of a traffic light but cuts sharper than just about every other piece of the puzzle. Much like a walk through Laos, a country still littered with 78 million unexploded bombs dropped by the US military during the Vietnam War, in a moment’s notice, KIA SAO ກ້ຽວສາວ’s tracks flip from idyllic tranquility to harsh chaos. Bombs dropped by men, many of which forced to be there, men who’ve now been kicked onto the streets of America to die, are still taking 300 Laotian lives each year and 60% of those are children. Tragedy permeates the record, especially its conclusion, “Tebu Sauyun,” a somber six minutes of strings that abandons bright melodies and electronics in favor of dour and pensive extended notes, eventually fading with a singular drawn out sound, making for one of the most reflective closers of the year. Listen to KIA SAO ກ້ຽວສາວ on Bandcamp. [Ryan Moloney]

“Qu’il soit seul, ou présentement en compagnie de Klaas Huebner, Ayankoko est un bien étrange phénomène, un EVP oublieux de son V, une esquisse l’onde tangible mais impalpable, accessoirement ludique ou partiellement inquiétante, un phénomène en absolue opposition à tout rationalité (noumène), la recette d’un pétillant et délicieux jus de fruit, néanmoins oscillant, en quelque sorte.” 

Thierry Massard, noCo…mment netaudio blog, France.

“Yet another headache for the fuzzy librarian in me; Ayankoko!!! strikes me as an unclassifiable artist from where I’m sitting, and if I had to be precise in my assessment of his work I would fail miserably, for how can a man be exact when trying to describe a river of lava free-flowing its way through someone’s subconscious carpark and wildly twisting and turning everything that stands in its path? Concrete… improvisational… electronics… collage. See? Wild blurs and melted metamorphoses may be fine for a Bacon painting but I can’t use that strategy to tag Stereosexline (though blurs and metamorphoses are key elements here). For all its concrete and collage qualities however, there is no single straight line separating one substance from the next. This is more of a glutinous, quivering mass… like an acephalous dust bunny drowning in a sea of jell-o. But don’t let that scare you off from a mighty fine musical experience, Ayankoko!!! has a great ear for tone and texture, and his sense of structure and logic, however stream of consciousness it may be, is in fact strong as an ox… or strong enough to kill an ox with one single blow to the head. An acephalous ox, mind you.” 

Eduardo Padilla, Dog-eared records, Mexico.

Ayankoko は、フランス在住の音楽家/作曲家/プロデューサーでありギター奏者でもあるDavid Vilayleckによるソロプロジェクト。「Kia Sao ກ້ຽວສາວ」は、アジア系のアーティストの音楽や文化をハイブリット化するレーベル〈chainabot〉からリリースされた。電子音とラオスの伝統音楽が、穏やかでありながらどこか憂いを秘めた作品。ラオスをルーツに持つAyankoko 。サイケデリックなジャズフィージョン、ノイズ、電子音をラオスの伝統音楽や現地で録音したサンプリングとミックスさせた本作は、ノスタルジックな音響が、明るく穏やかな表情から破壊や絶望、そして希望へと展開していく。自身のルーツであるラオスへの想い、忘れてはならないラオスの歴史、現在もなお続く厳しい状況を色彩豊かな曲調で描いている。自身のルーツへの強い思い、深い歴史を自身の創造に変え明るく優しい世界観で我々を魅せていく。

Ayankoko – Kia Sao ກ້ຽວສາວ

Artist: Ayankoko

Album: Kia Sao ກ້ຽວສາວ

Label: Chinabot

 Ayankoko is the stage name of David Somphrachanh Vilayleck, a French-Laotian multi-instrumentalist and composer. Grown up in Europe from Laotian origins, this musician trained in French conservatories but maintained a strong bond with Laos and its troubled history: the Southeast Asia country was, in fact, the most bombed by the United States in the 1970s, although the two countries never officially declared war. It is a wound that has had serious repercussions in the history of the country and its inhabitants, both for the diaspora which ensued and both from the mines and unexploded bombs that still cause deaths after many years.

Ayankoko’s music reflects this synthesis. The album’s title itself is a declaration in this sense: “Kia Sao ກ້ຽວສາວ” is the Laotian for “holding your daughter on your back”, a reference to the cultural heritage of his origins that he carries with him while living in a distant country and culture. The music resulting from this meeting is a collage of styles and languages: from classical to ambient music, from traditional Laotian music to jazz, from field recordings to electronics.

There are moments of pure peace, absolutely abstract, and others decidedly more danceable and chaotic. In “Molan 9” a psychedelic guitar drags towards distant worlds and oriental suggestions, while “Downsides” fuses these melodies with frenetic rave and drum and bass rhythms. “17 2018.5.23llrec11.29.50” instead is a deconstructed track where noises and samples follow each other obsessively, while “Chinh Sae” is ethereal and melodic. They are obvious contrasts, which metaphorically recall the strident conflicts in Laotian history and people, which Ayankoko manages to masterfully blend together, creating a fascinating and engaging sound path.

By Francesco Cellino

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