Japan's Kawol Samarqandi had to cancel his March gig, but we're happy to announce that he will visit NZ in July, performing at Pyramid Club on Friday 3rd July, with Perpets (Anthony Milton/Zach Winterwood) supporting.
Kawol Samarqandi crafts non-national, “poor” music—stripped-down improvisations built only from his faltering guitar and trembling voice. In this sparse terrain of sound, silence becomes structural, and fragility becomes strength.
Samarqandi’s practice extends across borders. He collaborates with musicians around the world, sometimes face-to-face, sometimes via the Internet, creating works and performances that transcend geography. In 2007, he formed the duo REFUGEES with Mary Meacha Goldfish, further exploring themes of displacement, intimacy, and shared listening.
Born in a quiet port town, Kawol Samarqandi grew up surrounded by currents—of sea, air, and sound. The first music he remembers was not from records but from the fragile noise of shortwave radio and the solemn resonance of hymns. These early encounters with transmission and devotion would later echo through his work: fragments of signal, pauses, breath, and reverent silence.
At seventeen, he joined the fringe of the Tokyo new wave scene, performing as an idiosyncratic singer-songwriter in small clubs and alternative venues, cultivating a style that resisted easy classification.
In his mid-twenties, he wandered across North Africa—particularly Tunisia—and the Mediterranean region. There, he immersed himself in Arabic traditional music, studying under Mr. Ali Sriti. The modal intricacies and spiritual depth of the region’s musical heritage left a lasting imprint on his artistic language. During this period, he presented theater-style solo concerts, appeared at festivals, and made television appearances before eventually returning to Japan.
Across decades and continents, Kawol Samarqandi’s guiding principle remains unchanged: the will to listen attentively to the world through the austerely beautiful silences, notes, and structures of improvisation.
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Perpets is the duo of Antony Milton and Zac Winterwood. As a 'project' it is a means for exploring semi-formal minimalism with each track attempting to use only a restricted range of notes and with a focus on the decay of said notes. The compositional ideas behind the pieces frequently start out with a willful exploratory/experimental disregard for consonance, but somehow as a result of each of the players' long ingrained playing styles tend to drift back toward consonance.
$20 door sales ($10 unwaged)
Special thanks to Creative NZ and Wellington City Council for supporting Pyramid Club's programme.
