SAINKHO NAMTCHYLAK

Following their critically acclaimed collaborative album with Tinariwen in 2016, Sainkho Namtchylak and Grammy Award-winning producer Ian Brennan return with a set of improvised songs recorded on the abandoned islands of Venice where Brennan has resided for the past 10 years.

Sainkho speaks four languages but chose for this project, Where Water Meets Water: Bird Songs and Lullabies, to sing phonetically in the “language of nature. The album was recorded outdoors, 100% live, with no overdubs, and with water as the main accompanying instrument.

“People don’t realize how big the Venetian lagoon is. It’s full of abandoned islands. Its history stretches over 1,500 years and tells the story of the inhabitants’ struggle for survival,” explains Ian Brennan.

In contrast to an era where images take precedence over sound, the aim of this project was to create an “audio film” indelibly imbued by time and place.

One of the tracks was recorded on the most haunted island in Venice, a place many consider the most haunted on the planet. It is estimated that 160,000 people died there from the plague, and it is rumored that over 50% of the soil is made up of human ashes. A psychiatrist who was conducting brain surgery experiments on patients eventually committed suicide by throwing himself off the tower of the asylum. Sainkho’s multi-octave voice can be heard bouncing off the walls of this former asylum, creating an otherworldly reverberation.

Sainkho Namchylak is one of the few female throat singers in Tuva. Her grandmother introduced her to the traditional Tuvan repertoire and Sainkho began to study both the traditional repertoire and overtone singing, a practice until then reserved only to men. Battling against misogyny at the beginning of her career, she has gone on to release over forty albums. Her music is an intertwined mix of tradition and innovation, which draws on the Siberian and Mongolian tradition to create modern sounds all tied together by her pure and enchanting voice.