GALYA BISENGALIEVA’S VIDEO “KANTUBEK” OUT NOW

DEBUT ALBUM ARALKUM OUT SEPTEMBER 4 VIA ONE LITTLE INDEPENDENT RECORDS

Galya Bisengalieva shares single and video “Kantubek” off of her debut album Aralkum, a work centered on the disastrous shrinking of the Aral Sea, due September 4 through One Little Independent Records (Björk, Poppy Ackroyd). The video is premiering via WNYC’s New Sounds; check out the premiere HERE and share HERE.

The shrinking of the Aral Sea has been called one of the worst environmental disasters on the planet. Situated in Central Asia, it was once the fourth largest lake in the world—but the rivers that fed the Aral were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects from the 1960s, and it has been disappearing ever since. “The writing of Aralkum came out of an innate need to tell the story of the tragedy of the Aral Sea, which has been overlooked and ignored,” says Bisengalieva. “I have always been passionate about the environment, but was specifically motivated to explore the Aral as it’s close to my heart and connected to my family roots. My family on my mother’s side is from the region.”

The video for “Kantubek” was shot using a drone flying over the Aral Desert, laying bare the environmental devastation’s sheer magnitude. Bisengalieva’s playing suits the video’s slow pans over desiccated landscapes: “I work a lot with drone and multi-layered strings,” she says. “So finding the voice of the Aral came quickly to me as my style suited the simplicity of the barren desert as well as the flowing of the water.”

The Kazakh-British violinist has established herself among experimental composers as the leader of the London Contemporary Orchestra, having contributed her distinct playing to projects including Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool, Thom Yorke’s Suspiria soundtrack and Frank Ocean’s Blonde. Her solo works, EP One and EP Two, focused on fields of tone and sawing drones, with the latter exploring more complicated digital landscapes.

For more information, please contact Zoe Sonnenberg, Krista Williams or Carla Sacks at Sacks & Co., 212.741.1000.

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