Koan

Biography

Producing sophisticated psychedelic Chill Out music is a discipline within the electronic music scene that is similar to playing Jazz in a certain respect: It needs maturity and extensive musical experience to go beyond the scope of standards, to become really good and extraordinary. This might have to do with the fact that this kind of music is not aiming a busy dance floor, rising its hands and shouting out loud during the breaks. Instead of that, it is made for the individual mind and therefore includes a less functional but pretty intellectual, mature and also very artistic moment. Seen in front of this background, the history of Koan gives some interesting hints about the astonishing musical quality of this Russian duo.

The early ninties with their wild and excessive Techno parties, exotic culture artifacts of another world, that brought Daniel Roeth to the scene: he experienced electronically generated Hard-Trance and Acid-Techno in the underground clubs of Moscow as a passionate DJ. Discovery of the fascinating creative possibilities that were offered by the tracker programs, first widespeard form of software based audio sequencers, some time later, made him neglect the turntables more and more often to dive deeper and deeper into his very own universe of sounds instead. In this situation it was only a question of time until he met William Grey known as dr. Klaxer, who was an essential part of the Demo-scene in later part of 80's.

In those days Grey programmed his own 8-bit musical codes for Atari-800, Commodore-64, wrote PC tracker-modules and worked on experimental sound-design for independent gaming-industry. William always successfuly combined musical activity with his main work at ambulance service in Moscow as doctor. And his noisy-experimental solo-project called "Paranorma" dedicated to contemporary medical elaborations and real ambulance sound-atmospheres.

Joining their creative energies in a mutual studio in 1993 Roeth & Grey brought three projects to life: Vacuum Stalkes follows the idea of "Digital Dance Sampledelica" or "Digital Techno", which is Progressive in the original meaning of the term, Fatum Sci-Fi is a project dedicating abstract noise experiments, IDM and Minimal and finally the Chill Out project Koan became the most popular of these three. Beside these activities, Daniel Roeth is also busy with composing music for video games and Russian documentary films. In the end of 2008 Roeth & Grey launched new electro/minimal-progressive studio-act under eponymous alias.

After sixteen years of constant evolution, of trying and testing different hardware and software and finding the limits of their possibilities have formed a sound that is outstanding both in the ideas and arrangements behind it as well as its production quality. So Koan today represents top-notch Chill Out music that seeps into the listener's mind with touching harmonies and a mind bending brilliance. Beside being highly active in Russia, the duo has also chilled numerous international Trance festivals around the globe. When the Silence is Speaking (CD album) [2009] Blue Tunes Recordings.. Matching the cold, dark and rather silent indoor season in the northern hemisphere, Blue Tunes Records presents the perfect acoustic accessories for easy evenings at home, meditative hours or cosy togetherness in front of the fireplace. The Russian Chillout phenomenon called "Koan" was formed by top producers duo Roeth & Grey and has been exploring the possibilities of electronic sound creation for more than 16 years. As Koan Roeth & Grey developed an outstanding, non-typical and independent style.

Founded on hovering bass lines and ethno flavoured percussions, their fourth album evolves complex, ever changing and highly harmonic arrangements in seemingly endless acoustic spaces of floating ecstasy. According to the Blue Tunes sound policy, the production quality really provokes a psychedelic effect just by its astonishing brilliance. Beside a series of entirely new tracks inspired by Greek mythology, "When The Silence Is Speaking" also features some "blue mixes" - fresh re-interpretations of tunes from Koan's first album "Talking Stones" which was dedicated to ancient Japanese culture, they illustrate the continuous gain of universal ethnic musical skills...





Koan