Sainkho Namchylak

Sainkho Namchylak / Dickson Dee: Tea Opera

by Glenn Astarita
September 26, 2009

Dickson Dee (Li Chin Sung) is an enterprising artist and businessman, responsible for opening up many doors via Independent label distribution and various production efforts for artists in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. He's embedded his wares into a global setting, while also recording for John Zorn's Tzadik label on his 1996 solo debut, PAST. An adventurous proponent of avant live electronics, Dee's craft shines radiantly throughout this persuasive collaboration with experimental and highly-regarded Tuvan throat singer, Sainkho Namchylak.

Sainkho Namchylak / Jarrod Cagwin: In Trance

by John Eyles
February 25, 2008

This album is well named. At the mundane level, its title derives from the fact that it was recorded live at the “In Trance" festival in Vienna, in October 2006. But it also contains music able to induce a trance like state, literally, to entrance. The music was inspired by, and is dedicated to, the great paintings of Dunhuang caves in Chin--and “inspired" is the word; Namchylak is on top form.

In recent years she has diversified away from the ...

Sainkho Namchylak & Roy Carroll: Tuva-Irish Project

by John Eyles
May 15, 2007

If the collaboration between a Tuvan throat singer and an Irish laptop-ist sounds an unlikely combination, the end results fully justify the experiment; remarkably, the pairing works perfectly. The music here was developed over two years as Sainkho Namchylak and Roy Carroll explored ways to blend their music together in an improvised context.

On the opener--"Hill Tara --Namchylak's voice, as so often, initially grabs the attention as she displays the lilting, lyrical aspects of her singing, rather than ...

Sainkho Namchylak: Nomad

by John Eyles
April 16, 2007

This album is a compilation to mark Sainkho Namchylak's fiftieth birthday. It brings together examples of her work in different styles, recorded for various labels--not just Leo--over the past twenty years. The album opens with a brief example of the remarkable sounds that first made many aware of Namchylak back in the late '80s, the high pitched ululating and howling that sounds more like a primate's cry than a human voice.

Peppered through the album are other examples of the ...