Ko Shin Moon : “Hybrid, cosmopolitan and explorer”

Can you introduce yourselves ?

 A: Hello, I’m Axel from Ko Shin Moon. I play tring instruments and machines. 

N: I’m Nico and I play keyboards and machines.

 What is Ko Shin Moon? 

A: It’s a reference to an album of a musician we love, who is called Haruomi Hosono and who made an album in the 70’s called Ko Shin Moon.

Your music in 3 words?

A: Hybrid, cosmopolitan and explorer

Which territories do you register in? 

A: We really listen to music from everywhere, whatever the styles, territories or affiliations. We are part of a line of exploratory, cross-border and trans-style musicians. 

What instruments and machines do you play?

A: We use a whole range of instruments that we bring back from our travels. 

A: We have a zither, an Afghan rubab, an Iranian setâr, an electric baglama and a whole series of synthesizers and old machines: a mini Moog, a Prophet 5, a Juno … Selected instruments that are at the same time traditional, electronic and synthetic electronic instruments.  

Which tracks do you use for sampling? 

N: For sampling, we use a lot of collections of vinyls and cassettes that we have accumulated over many travels and that we “digge”. We try to listen to a maximum of sound, a maximum of influences on a lot of labels that we particularly like and that we also discover a little bit every day. 

N: We also do a lot of samples for the inspiration of the riffs we play and then mainly on drums or percussive elements in order to try to  give texture or timbrality to particular elements. 

A: We will also sometimes use field recordings that we have made during our travels to give an atmosphere or to integrate particular moments in a piece. 

Your most beautiful scenic memory?

N: It was in Makan, Cairo, following the residency we did with the French Institute there, an absolutely magnificent place. We recorded there the collaborations that will be on the first EP. 

Can you present us “Miniature”?

A: Miniature” is a series of EPs whose central concept is to pay tribute to the music that touched us or inspired us from a particular region. So to have a miniature, a musical digest of a region, to avoid being exhaustive and rather to have a musical digest of this region or at least the way we perceived it, the way we listened to it, the way it influenced our music.

What collaborations are you planning?

A: The first mini EP focuses on the region of Egypt and the Levant, and sees a collaboration with musicians from Egypt and Palestine. 

N: We worked with Mouna Hawa, a Palestinian singer and actress, and Sara al-Rawi, who is an Egyptian singer, as well as Amine Chahene, a player from Argoul.

A: They are musicians, whom we met, for Mouna, during a series of concerts we did in Palestine, and for Sara and Amine, during the residency we did in Cairo two years ago. 

More unexplored territories that you would like to discover?

A: The idea of the project is to explore and be cross-border, so we have no territorial boundaries. At the moment, we listen to a lot of Iranian music, for example, and still a lot of Indian music. We would also like to work with Indian musicians and explore the different repertoires of this music.