Başak Günak - Rewilding (2024)

Başak Günak is a Istanbul-born, Berlin-based sound artist and composer, also internationally known as AH! KOSMOS in the field of electronic music. Her work includes sound art, performance, sound installation, composition for theater and contemporary dance.

In her forthcoming solo album Rewilding, Başak Günak has worked with the themes of (auto-)rewilding, foraging and decay, while also incorporating sounds she has gathered from her sound art and sound installations. “Rewilding” embodies the sounds of whistles, whispers, a deconstruction of a South-Eastern Anatolian folk song and the instruments; organ, bass clarinet, halldrophone, Buchla 100 and a broken piano. As foraging does not require territorial exclusivity, Başak Günak weaves together three songs from her sound installations presented in 2020 and 2023.

While reimaging whispers, whistles, murmurs and sine waves as the auto-rewilders of the soundscape of the album, Günak creates a soft and porous medium that later disappears into the swamp. Sometimes these whistles take the form of a distant sound of a murmur that tends to disappear and then reaches to the surface again and overflows into audibility.