»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.