Hainbach + Sinemis

Ah! Kosmos at Vespers

Baba Yaga's Hut present:

Ah! Kosmos & Hainbach + Sinemis at Vespers, November 19th

Gentle Hum is the second duo album by Berlin-based electronic music artists Ah! Kosmos and Hainbach.

Following their 2023 debut Blast of Sirens, the 14 pieces see Başak Günak and Stefan Goetsch work with non-musical instruments capable of creating experimental music to haunting and melancholic effect. Their patient and careful excavation of textures and tones treats noise and hum not as incidental artefacts, but as integral, living elements of the sonic realm. The intricate interplay of the rhythms and sounds of test equipment, analogue synthesizers, occasional piano accompaniment, and even processed vocals provide the soundtrack to a journey through in-between states and suspended time.

Günak and Goetsch are prolific recording artists, the former having been releasing experimental electronic music under the Ah! Kosmos moniker as well as creating sound installations and compositions for performance and film under her real name. Besides putting out many solo and collaboration albums, Goetsch has also worked as a film composer on movies such as Fatih Akin’s Amrum and runs a YouTube channel on which he often demonstrates the potentials of rare music gear and non-musical machinery. Indeed, the duo takes the sonic output of nuclear test equipment or dolphin filters from marine biology as its starting point. “These sounds aren’t neutral; they carry the weight of time passing through machines and bodies,” explains Günak. “When you stop trying to clean it up, they reveal their behaviour as organisms. They have weight, they evolve, they resist.”

Enduring and indeed working with said resistance is the guiding principle of the duo’s exploratory recording sessions. “We switch roles all the time and move between stations a lot,” says Goetsch. “Sometimes I play the wall of test equipment and Başak rides the faders, sometimes it is the other way around.” Among the hardware used on Gentle Hum is