Amina Hocine - ātamōn - 1CD

With simple materials found in hardware stores — PVC pipes, water hoses, and ball valves — powered by a construction-site air compressor, mesmerizing drones emerge that challenge expectations of the material.

Originally inspired by foghorns and sirens, Amina set out to gain control over these sounds by building a foghorn organ. What emerged was something far beyond foghorns: a haunting, electronic-sounding acoustic instrument that spreads frequencies like lasers. Amina refers to these as sound crystals. They translate surprisingly well to recording and are best experienced through speakers.

Conceived during a residency at Skogen in Gothenburg, ātamōn is the result of a personal and spiritual exploration. Drawing from years of conversations with a spiritual advisor and therapeutic work on inner archetypes, Amina transforms composition into a tool for self-inquiry. The piece centres on a deconstructed foghorn organ, with eight pipes placed throughout the room, each representing a distinct psychological archetype such as The Safe Place, Hyperarousal, or Original Face.

The title ātamōn, derived from Old High German meaning “to breathe”, reflects the instrument as a living, communicating organism. With pipes instead of actors and sound in place of speech, the composition unfolds like a wordless theatre in which frequencies enact the tensions, longings, and contradictions of human experience.

Recorded in the vast, reverberant space of Spelhuset at Ställbergs gruva, an out-of-use iron mine in rural Sweden, ātamōn becomes a sonic ritual — an encounter between body, resonance, and the infinite. The space itself amplifies the work as each sound lingers, refracts, and folds back into itself.

In ātamōn I, the play unfolds as the different parts communicate and test one another. Each archetype believes it serves a purpose, even when its effect is painful. The work gives these parts space to speak, bringing them into balance through listening rather than judgement.

In ātamōn II, the space itself speaks with the instrument. Moving through the sound field with microphones, Amina activates the acoustic properties of the chamber, inviting the mine to respond as sound draws from the resonance of the place.

The result is drone-based music in which textures emerge slowly, punctuated by moments of sudden intensity — alarm-like signals and interlocking polyrhythms that cut through the density. Elsewhere, the sound becomes vast and oceanic, inviting the listener to drift through a continuously shifting field of resonance.

Informed by inner inquiry, symbolic systems, spiritual science, and the re-enchantment of sound, ātamōn constructs an architecture of vibration — a memory not of events, but of presence. Rather than telling a story, the work opens a space for listening, sensing, and transformation.

1. ātamōn I

2. ātamōn II

Manufacturer:

Multiverse LTD Multiverse LTD, 10 Park Street, Bristol BS1 5HX UK info@multiverse-music.com

EU Representative:

UAB Mushroom Agency

Saulėtekio al. 15-1, LT-10224, Vilnius, Lithuania