K-Space

K-Space
K-Space is the spiritual, musical and artistic fruition of a long and vivid encounter with the cultures of southern Siberia.  An insistence on cultural and musical difference based on respect and shared philosophy.  A band that pushes the boundary of what such a collaboration can mean.  

Gendos Chamzyryn, an original member of the ground-breaking Biosintes group, is one of the most astounding performers of the music of Tuva, recognised as shaman-artist by the foremost Tuvan society of shamans, master of the Kargiraa throat-singing style, and maker of traditional stone carvings. He has recorded and toured with Sainkho Namtchylak, and released two solo albums.  

Hodgkinson is a composer and musician involved in an enormous range of projects. He  played alto saxophone with God, and now plays lapsteel guitar with the Konk Pack trio and bass clarinet with Iancu Dumitrescu's Hyperion Ensemble. His pieces were featured at last year's Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

Hyder has drummed with South African, Brazilian and Celtic folk musicians and with Japanese and Tibetan Buddhist monks. He currently plays in duos with Scottish singer, Maggie Nicols, saxophonists Geoff Hearn and Ray MacDonald, US bassist Scipio and Russian pianist, Vladimir Miller. He also plays shamanic percussion with RealTime with US percussionist z'ev, trumpeter Andy Knight and Scipio; and with Raz3 with Lu Edmonds, cembush, and Tim Hodgkinson, reeds.

The origins of K-Space lie in a series of trips to Siberia undertaken by Hodgkinson and Hyder from 1990 onwards. They aimed to explore what shamanism could mean for contemporary music performance. Before joining up with Chamzyryn, they worked with Sainkho Namtchylak and Yat Kha from Tuva, Bolot Biryshev from the Altai, and Anatoly Kokov from Khakassia. It was Sainkho who first invited them to Tuva, where they quickly met a number of people who would become very important for their future music-making.  They made friends with the musicians of Biosintes – a kind of Tuvan Sun Ra band which included Gendos Chamzyryn. They also met Mongush Kenin-Lopsan - an anthropologist who later kick-started the public re-emergence of shamans, and who would soon afterwards set up the Dungur association of shamans. And in the south of Tuva they met the lama Kungaa Tash-Ool Buu. Although they didn’t know it at the time, Kungaa had been a shaman in secret for 30 years.

Over the next few years their tours of Siberia became field trips for studying both the music and the shamanic practices of the region with shamans including Nikolai Michailov and Yeremi Hagayev from west Baikal, Kungaa, Dopshun Kara-Ool and the late Makar-Ool from Tuva, and with Kenin Lopsan.

In 1996 they played for the first time as a trio with Gendos, and K-Space was born. The band takes the name from Nikolai Kozyrev, the Russian astro-physicist. Kozyrev believed that time was a conduit for energy and built a machine known as Kozyrev’s Mirrors which Hodgkinson and Hyder had seen in Akademgorodok, Siberia's science city. When they suggested the name to Chamzyryn, he pointed out that 'K' in Russian means 'towards', giving the idea of opening out towards the cosmos. And this is what K-Space music is all about.

RELATED DISCOGRAPHY    
*  Shams: Tim Hodgkinson/Ken Hyder, Impetus (1987)  
*  The Goose: Hodgkinson/Hyder/Ponomareva, Megaphone (US), Woof (1992)  
*  The First Take: Biosintes w. Gendos Chamzyryn, FMP (1996)  
*  Burghan Interference: Shams - Tim Hodgkinson/Ken Hyder, Slam (2000)  
*  Shizo i.d.: Gen-Dos - Chamzyryn, Revival of the Computer (Tuva) (2001)  
*  Bear Bones: K-Space - Hodgkinson / Hyder / Chamzyryn, Slam (2002)  
*  Kamlaniye: Gendos Chamzyryn, Long Arms (Russia) CDLA 04070 (2004)  
*  Shaman Tree: Gendos Chamzyryn, Luna Music (Poland) (2005)
* Going Up: K-Space - Hodgkinson / Hyder / Chamzyryn, Ad Hoc (2005)    
* Vocal Evocations: Chyskyyrai: with Hodgkinson / Hyder & others, SOASIS (2008)