Polygon tells the tale of one of the darkest episodes in Kazakh history, which though it created more nuclear fallout than Chernobyl, The Polygon is little known internationally.
Kazakh-British artist Galya Bisengalieva returns this October with her second studio album for One Little Independent, Polygon and shares the video for the lead single Balapan today.Balapan is a facility at the Semipalatinsk site primarily used for underground explosions. “The track is full of off grid beats and warped, atonal harmony with the rhythms created on the violin” explains Galya. “It’s a sarcastic track that seems happy at first glance. I was imagining people going to work constructing and building in a repetitive, cyclical motion and not really realising or being told what it was for or the impact it was going to bring. Balapan in Kazakh means chick, it’s what we call babies, and when I was growing up in Almaty we had a TV channel for toddlers called the same name; ironic for a place that wrought so much harm.”
BALAPAN – official video
Nico Sersale “The cinematographer Alex Grigoras and I spent a day experimenting with a glass top, a few syringes, some paint and a flask of ferrofluid – a black liquid that reacts to magnets. Our aim was to create a vast and mysterious landscape that evoked the nuclear test site of Balapan. Our little explosions of ferrofluid onto glass wanted to represent those devastating experiments that took place between 1949 and 1989 with little regard for their effect on the local people or environment.”
Director & editor : Nico Sersale
Director of photography : Alex Grigoras
produced by Komeda Films
Filmed in WorkShop Coworking Ltd. Camden
Born in the Kazakh capital Almaty in the late 80s before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Galya’s work returns to the themes of the environmental and the geopolitical for meditations on events that escape the power of words to capture. The subjects chose her due to the impact of her childhood in the country; news on the TV or the conversation with grandparents at the kitchen table. She comes from a family of musicians; both her parents played for the National State Symphony Orchestra in Kazakhstan; her mother as a cellist and her father as orchestra lead. Her grandfather played the long-necked Turkic folk instrument the dombra (and was one of the first players to be recorded on vinyl during the Soviet era). Before 1991 the country was so poor many families including Galya’s needed to queue up for bread. She later won a music scholarship to the UK and studied violin first at the Royal Academy for undergrad then a masters at the Royal College of Music.There have been a handful of films about The Polygon legacy and the dramatic tensions on the record play out like a film. Not a surprise given Galya’s career and her credits across movies and television. As leader of the London Contemporary Orchestra she has played on numerous Paul Thomas Anderson movies as well as improvising forLuca Guadagnino’s 2018 Suspiria. As a solo violinist her playing style has had a huge impact on the sound of movies leading her to become a go to collaborator for many composers including Oscar winners Hildur Ingveldardóttir Guðnadóttir and Volker Bertelmann. Her technique of circular bowing adds an ethereal shimmer to the violin closer to synthesised sound and ushered a new texture into the lexicon (and is also in evidence on Polygon). The unique tone has seen Galya’s playing sought out by other musicians, like Sigur Rós, The National, Taylor Swift, Frank Ocean, Radiohead and Actress.Galya’s voice and violin electronically manipulated are the beating heart of the record, using various preparation techniques to create a range of industrial bleeps and percussive clicks and other soundstage effects, recorded without a tempo bar structure and a click for an untethered, out of time effect.
artist Galya Bisengalieva
title Polygon
label One Little Independent
date 20th October 2023
Tracklist:
1. Alash-kala
2. Saryzhal
3. Polygon
4. Sary-Uzen
5. Chagan
6. Balapan
7. Degelen
Galya will headline the ICA in London on 28th November.