Tañ (Instrumental)

"Tañ" ("Dawn") is an instrumental by the Iradi duo tüntolk, the closing track of their debut album Jolchu (1999).^[1]

Music

Askar Daniyarov recorded the piece alone at the end of a night shift in the Nurzhan boiler room where the album was made, as daylight came through the skylight. It begins in darkness, on the deep hum of the boiler pumps and a low Polivoks drone, heavily echoed in the coal store. Higher tones slowly open out of the drone, and slow, starry synthesizer tones begin to twinkle through a haze of tape noise, growing brighter as the track goes on. Critics have described it as an early piece of illbient and compared it to lying on one's back watching the stars fade. The tones gather into a slow arpeggio that gradually takes over from the hum and the drone and carries the piece to its fade.^[1]

Reception

The piece follows "Morkhan, Karañgy Ee" on the album, and critics have read it as the answer to it: the album's long night ends in daylight. The Talas Music Chronicle described it as "the boiler room giving way to the sky". Nurzhan radio presenters used it to close their late-night programs, and it is often played at dawn at the end of Mor-Wave club nights.^[1][2]

References

1. ^ Talas Music Chronicle (2021). The Sound of the Night Wave: tüntolk and the Rise of Mor-Wave, pp. 56–58.
2. ^ Central Asian Music Review (2020). 'Mor-Wave and the Post-Soviet Electronic Synthesis in Central Asia.' Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 41–66.