Aho Ssan & Resina - Ego Death (2025)

French sound designer Aho Ssan expands his collaboration with Polish cellist Resina over eight chapters on 'Ego Death', complimenting her advanced bio-synthetic technique with jagged, noisy deconstructions and broken, digital rhythms. Five years ago, Paris-based artist Niamké Désiré (aka Aho Ssan) and Karolina Rec (aka Resina) were invited by Unsound to participate in Weavings, a remote Zoom improvisation session put together by Nicolás Jaar and the Unsound team. And although there were 10 additional musicians performing alongside them, Désiré and Rec immediately realized they had a special connection. Désiré followed up by inviting Rec to contribute to his acclaimed Deleuze and Guattari-inspired 'Rhizomes' album in 2021, and they late reconvened for a live version of Weavings in 2022, following it up with an early premiere of 'Ego Death'. Three years later, and the album's finally been finished, put together with the care and attention you'd expect from artists as exacting as Rec (who's released three sublime solo albums on FatCat's esteemed 130701 imprint) and Désiré. Firstly, it sounds incredible. Rec's cello was recorded by Rabih Beaini at his Morphine Raum studio in Berlin, while additional organ stems from Tomek Hoax were captured at the Kraków Philharmonic before everything with mixed and mastered by Emptyset's James Ginzburg. And if you've heard Désiré's previous records, you'll know how precise and penetrating his sound design is. It sounds better than ever here, forming an unusual bond with Rec's cello and the duo's additional instrumentation. And it's the cello we first hear on 'Egress I., Pt. 1', croaking, squeaking and droning before Désiré introduces his synthesized drones and interferences. It's all about the narrative here; the album is a single piece of music that's split into movements, and the push and pull between Désiré and Rec is important. On 'Egress IV', for example, Rec takes the lead, while Désiré takes the reins on 'Egress V', complimenting Hoax's imposing organ stabs with subby punctuations and ear-rupturing noise while Rec adds subtle vocals. The peak, for us at least, is 'Egress VI', when Désiré's oscillations and computations fall away for a moment and the album's operatic grandeur is fully visible. It's a bold, purposefully dramatic record - and one that'll appeal to fans of Emptyset, Aïsha Devi, Saint Abdullah & Eomac or Tim Hecker.