Chinabot is pleased to announce Pisitakun’s second album, SOSLEEP.
Created shortly after the death of his father to cancer, Thai artist Pisitakun has combined traditional mourning instruments with harsh noise and techno beats, wrapping them around intimate recordings of the hospital machinery keeping his father alive during his final days.
The result is SOSLEEP, a meditation on the raw, messy chaos of grief. Opening with the sound of a Buddhist monk’s funeral chants, the record’s BMP is led by real recordings of his father heartbeat, turned into electronic blips by the hospital pulse gauge.
Droning, aching Thai funeral instruments mingle with the sound of his father’s oxygenator to express the woozy disorientation of loss.
“I was feeling empty and in grief,” Pisitakun says. “Everything around me was moving in an eccentric way, sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow. This album kind of acted as a religious hymn in my life.”
As is tradition in Thailand, Pisitakun joined a Buddhist monastery for a short period as a monk following his father’s passing. The sounds of the monastery, along with his father’s funeral service, also bled into this record.
“Traditional Thai instruments really got into my brain and set off some of my emotions,” he says. “In Southeast Asia, most of the instrument were made for rites and religious services, like a hymn or a gospel. These noises and sounds could easily mess with your brain.”
While deeply personal and with strong traditional elements, the record is primarily electronic, its swirling soundscapes and thudding beats recalling Container, Giant Swan, Pete Swanson, Merzbow, Minced Meat or Tenspeed or Mutwawa. Pisitakun also created the album art, which shows a hospital bed, covered in medical and musical machinery.
About the artist
Pisitakun, whose full name is Pisitakun Kuntalang, is a visual artist and musician living in Bangkok, his home city. His previous album, Black Country, was released in 2017 and examined the harsh political climate in Thailand, which censers freedom of expression. He released a split tape on Chinabot last year, called Dângrêk Mountains.
