Harmonium, Ambient & Torture Form The Basis Of Nilotpal Das AKA Bios Contrast's 'Harmonium I'

With 24 of its 28 tracks clocking above or just below 1 hour each, Kolkata-based Nilotpal Das' latest album 'Harmonium I' is bound to appear daunting to anyone who comes across it. Its very creator warns that one must "listen to no more than two tracks a day" – a request that's the opposite of what artists usually would make before presenting their long-form releases. But then, 'Harmonium I' isn't a usual release.

According to Das, who also goes by the alias Bios Contrast, 'Harmonium I' started as an experiment to see if he could play the harmonium for 12 hours, but soon became a "developmental hell". The process sent the experimental artist pondering the potential of music as a tool for torture as he shares the results with the aforementioned warning.

The bulk of the album is simply hour-long recordings of Das playing drones of 2-4 notes that he switches at random intervals, alongside their counterpart tracks where those recordings are heavily treated and morphed into beds of noisy textures.

As a listener, however, the true merit of this whole exercise lies in the final two tracks 'Studio Suicide 2020' and 'Studio Suicide 2021', where Das strikes the balance between the merit of the art's concept and the merit of experiencing that art. A reference to work by Tim Hecker and Das' "way of translating how music for me has died since 2021 during the pandemic", the two tracks show how the familiar nature of a harmonium (treated with a CPU fan) can become the perfect instrument for ambient and noise music. The rich harmonics of the instrument create slow movements with an ebb and flow of the performance's dynamics and the intimate clicks of each key, creating two fresh solo organic pieces in the genre that's dominated by electronics and synthesisers.

Listen to 'Harmonium I' below and follow Bios Contrast for more information.