1984

Sakina Abdou, Mariam Rezaei & Kobe Van Cauwenberghe

1984 is the new trio of saxophonist Sakina Abdou (FR), turntablist and composer Mariam Rezaei (UK) and myself on guitar. All three of us share a year of birth, the slightly ominous sounding 1984, somewhat reflective of current times, yet also a great band name.

Sci-fi references don’t have to be dystopian however, like the great Ursula K. Le Guin, whose novel “The Dispossessed” served as inspiration to write music for this new unique trio. In a somewhat inconspicuous passage Le Guin describes how the main character, the brilliant physicist Shevek, meets a composer who translated Shevek's revolutionary theories into a musical composition:

“I’m writing a piece of chamber music. Thought I might call it The Simultaneity Principle. [Several] instruments each playing an independent cyclic theme; no melodic causality; the forward process entirely in the relationship of the parts. It makes a lovely harmony.”
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed

Shevek’s theory challenges traditional ideas of sequential causality, suggesting that past, present, and future are all happening simultaneously, though human perception can only experience them sequentially. I took this musical reference as a starting point to write a collection of melodies with this trio of turntables, saxophone and guitar in mind, allowing space for improvisation, co-creation and experimentation. The turntables represent the cyclical process of time, melodic and harmonic movement in the guitar and saxophone creates sequential linearity. But these roles are never set. As a hybrid trio the musicians operate between cycles and sequences, lines and circles, past - present and future all at once, non-linearity as default yet all in one simultaneous forward process.

1984 is currently developing this material, aiming for an album debut somewhere in the coming months…