Zubin Kanga

Hypnagogia (after Bach)

Hypnagogia (after Bach) is about being sleep-deprived on long-haul flights, listening to Bach in a state of half-sleep, where dreams begin to intrude on waking life, a state of hypnagogia. In one of these states, during one of many long trips to Australia, Kanga heard the last movement of Bach’s Matthew Passion, ‘Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder’, in the revving of the plane’s engines. When inside the cabin, one can hear these descending 3rds and 6ths in the upper harmonics of the engine noise: rising and falling through different ranges but never resolving.

The work combines a Korg Prologue synthesizer, a piano with live electronics and MiMU sensor gloves that use gesture and movement to capture and morph these sounds. Bach’s soaring melody and restless harmonies are stretched across registers, multiplied and scattered using delays, broken into rippling arpeggiated patterns and re-assembled into walls of synthesised sound. Yet even at the points of greatest abstraction, Bach’s music remains indestructibly recognisable.

Hypnagogia (after Bach) appears on Zubin Kanga’s album Cyborg Pianist.