www.akaraproject.com 
Austen Bailey: ReEvAusten@gmail.com

AKARA

Created by Joshua Penman, a conservatory-trained classical composer turned electronic producer, Akara's mystical dance-floow symphonies are songs of luminous extra-dimensional beings, sung across the veil of reality.  Akara's music is intricately scored for a live ensemble of classical musicians and the haunting vocals of Ffemke Weidema.  It is a deep, mystical journey into another world, fusing an enormously wide palette of musical influences with a generous helping of bass.  Filigreed and beautiful and immersive, there is nothing like Akara.

Akara is the mature endpoint of a long process of musical study and mystical inquiry, spanning three continents and nearly twelve years.  Before creating Akara, Joshua Penman earned a doctorate studying classical composition, sang medieval music, played in Balinese and Sudanese gamelans, studied six languages, went to Burning Man three times, scored four films, and lived in India, learning ragas with a master Indian singer.  All the while, he held and refined the vision of a musical ensemble that would create the ritual music of another dimension.

Deeply influenced by psychedelic ambient music and the global bass phenomenon, Akara is a new kind of composed electronic music: elegant and filigreed, immersive and otherworldly.  It is intricately scored for a live ensemble of up to eleven musicians and the haunting female vocals of Femke Weidema, and fuses an enormous number of musical influences with a generous helping of bass.  The word "Akara" comes from the Indonesian words "akar", meaning root or vine, and "acara", meaning ritual or performance.  Akara is a mystical, ritual music, the songs of luminous extra-dimensional beings with melodies and words at once new and familiar, a strange and beautiful dream, a dance-floor journey into another world.

---