Isnaj Dui is Katie English, based in North London, UK. Her work in the past has graced labels such as Home Normal, Smallfish, Rural Colours and her own imprint FBox Records. One of her most recent and on-going projects is called Duodecim, a subscription based album that has seen a track released each month since September. It will eventually result in a CD which will be ready this August.
With a history of recording and musical study that spans back to 1995, Katie’s current sound is characterised by her use of flute, particularly the bass flute. This is generally a rarely used instrument but is used frequently throughout her work as a defining feature. Add to this a few home-made instruments and electronics and you have the very distinctive sound of Isnaj Dui, a project that has been active since 2004. Katie has performed live alongside the likes of Library Tapes, Nils Frahm, Konntinent and Simon Scott amongst others and in venues such as The Foundry, National Portrait Gallery and The Union Chapel.
Abstracts On Solitude is Isnaj Dui’s first album for Hibernate, represented by an out of focus image of wires and circuit boards which was taken as part of a film made for a gig at the Union Chapel. In Abstracts On Solitude, the wires and circuit boards that you see in the cover art are allowed a voice within the album, which lightly scatter the organic sound of flutes and dulcimer. Effects and processing is kept to a minimum wherever possible and only the slightest trace of this is clearly evident. It is within these subtle electronic infiltrations that the album’s charm can be found, as restrained shards of noise, circuit boards, reverb and light hiss rest comfortably on a soft and atmospheric bed created by the acoustic instrument sounds. On ‘What Lies Inside’, Katie had created an immediate response to having suffered a panic attack as a sort of recovery mechanism. The composition process comes from deep within, since she relies more on sub-conscious thought when recording. Whilst Abstract On Solitude is free from clear conceptual confines, it is its sense of lulling calm that becomes the calling card.
Released June 2012
Credits:
All music by Katie English
Photography by Katie English
Art direction by Ian M Hazeldine
Download available from Bandcamp:
Selected Reviews:
A Closer Listen: “This is ambient music with no grandiose intentions of changing the way we listen or the way we relate to a certain place; its only goal, perhaps, is to find itself reflected upon us.”
Fluid Radio: “Abstracts on Solitude is a deeply serene, uplifting experience, and one in which we can delve into and find our own solitude.”