Brooklyn-based artist Kaiwei has been making a name for himself ever since he began releasing his glitchy, experimental compositions on Soundcloud five years ago. As a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and creator of ambient soundscapes, the music of Taiwanese native Calvin “Kai-Wei” Chang has been featured in fashion shows, art installations, and, most recently, in the unconventional stage play Dress in Code by Ichen Wang. Now, Kaiwei is back with his debut album, Reprocessor.
Kaiwei’s work is truly progressive, pulling inspiration and sounds from several genres and mediums. From jazz instrumentals played largely by himself to sound loops to electronic sound design to sound effects, nothing is off-limits to Kaiwei. His style, rooted in glitch, industrial, and progressive electronica, has evolved over time, making his music almost indefinable. It seems to be about experience as well as experiment for this artist, and Reprocessor shows him leaning into both as this concept album took shape.
Reprocessor is a sonic documentation and “musicalization” of COVID-19 era found sounds, with songs composed between 2020-2022. Instead of conventional “reworking” of source materials, over two hours of raw recordings are repetitively reinforced, dissected, and extracted for expressive sonic events. Visceral and ominous, these dissected and extracted recordings evoke a COVID vibe even without Kaiwei explicitly stating it. The music, arranged in a way that remains clear and present (thanks to painstaking sound design), features Kaiwei and a handful of collaborators working through the emotion and expression of Reprocessor. It transitions from the nearly formless, eerie sounds of “Chung Yeung” and “Breakbeat Funky 102” into more musical tracks like the “Tors” series, the third of which actually has a beat for a minute. A constant element of organized chaos runs through the album, serving a purposeful artistic vision. The music on Reprocessor is simultaneously inviting to audiences who embrace experimental and conceptual art as well as the accessible pop mainstream.
No additional sounds were added subsequently. The goal remained solely utilizing and synthesizing prerecorded samples. They are therefore reprocessed rather than reworked, as performative and improvisational mediums with lush layers of ever-morphing textures. More than 120 unique samples were captured over three years, and over 50 musicians and artists contributed their voices. Among those were Luisa Bressan, Neel Ghosh, Nick Saia, Ethan Cohn, and Brian Marsella, whose improvisation ensemble at The New School CoPA inspired the making of this project.
It’s a unique and inside-out way of making music, but this deconstructed and “reprocessed” approach has led to surprisingly evocative, musical, and even emotional results. As the album reaches its title track in the dead center, Kaiwei’s point becomes patently clear: beauty and art can come from anywhere, even the dregs of a pandemic or a pile of seemingly random sound recordings. Reprocessor is a testament to the transformative power of creativity, pushing the boundaries of what music can be while capturing the essence of an unprecedented time.
Official Website: Kaiwei.cargo.site
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kaiweimusic/
Spotify
Bandcamp
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/kai-wei-chang-418414804
Nadia Elkharadly
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