KUALA LUMPUR: Making music with a bicycle, pipes, typewriter and a deconstructed guitar is not the usual way of going about things.
But Singaporean musician and sound artist Bani Haykal aims to break musical boundaries with his collection of one-of-a-kind musical instruments.
“My interest is in dormant music which I’ve been thinking and researching about for the last couple of years,” said Haykal.
“The concept of dormancy is what fascinates me when thinking of music or shifting our thoughts and perceptions when thinking of musical ideas or formation,” he said.
Haykal said the reason he used the idea of dormancy as a central figure in his work is because he has “grown up at a time where music is given to us as a product” and that our understanding of music is an output of the media.
“Basically it is marketed in such a way where they say that this is music and everything becomes very compartmentalized,” said Haykal.
“I would like to do away with that compartmentalization and find a new approach to music making,” he said.
But it was only when Haykal started a residency in Bandung, Indonesia that he began constructing his unique instruments.
“When I started the residency, I wanted to bring the research in and to see how I can create a work out of it. So in a period of a month I managed to create three instruments and tried to learn how to play each one of them as well,” he said.
Haykal said that it all started with a typewriter: “The sounds that the typewriter makes is music, and it gives me a load of musical ideas too.”
After that he created three of his own instruments using everyday items. He named them Recycle, Antiguitar and Pemp.
The Antiguitar is basically a deconstructed guitar, making it a whole different instrument.
“I thought to myself that the guitar has way too much baggage as an instrument. We immediately affiliate it with the instrument on stage and I found that to be quite limiting for the instrument,” said Haykal.
“So I thought that to liberate the instrument, I probably have to dissect it and deconstruct it to give it a new history,” he added.
When you first approach the Antiguitar, Haykal said that it looks like the most unplayable guitar and most people won’t know how to interface with it.
“The lap steel (of the Antiguitar) is quite traditional but the sound it makes is quite unique, I’d describe it as harp-like,” said Haykal.
He adds that the instrument allows musicians to have different sonic qualities in one instrument, without relying on other instruments or effects.
As for the Recycle, Haykal said that when one thinks of a bicycle, they think of constant movement with a relatively straightforward function.
“I was thinking to myself, if I have these wheels clashing against one another, that breaks the consonance away, and in a musical term you will get dissonance with a different function,” said Haykal.
“It’s in conflict with what it’s suppose to be,” he adds.
Pemp on the other hand, is made of pipes. Haykal said that one can interface with it in whichever way he or she likes.
“All these instruments will pose you with a question on how to interact with these instruments and how to play the instrument to make music with them,” said Haykal.
“These instruments offer an additional arsenal for a performer. Using these instruments to start composing new work is great because they have very different textures and qualities to them that traditional instruments won’t give you,” he said.
However, when asked about how he learnt how to play these extraordinary instruments, Haykal said that the learning process is very much like playing any new instrument for the first time.
“There is no history attached to it so that’s a plus point for me because there are no rules to how you are supposed to approach it and play it,” said Haykal.
You can check out Haykal’s one-of-a-kind instruments at the Media/Art Kitchen – Reality Distortion Field exhibition in Publika mall. The exhibition ends on Oct 20.
Limited time offer:
Just RM5 per month.
