CMS guest 2025
Berk Yagli
31.03.2025, Sonic Lab
ABPU Linz
16.00 CMS invited lecture #49 - Hybridity in Music: Current
Literature, Strategies, Methods, and the Hybridisation of
Electroacoustic Music and Metal
18.00 CMS Gesprächskonzert #25 - Acousmatic Metal: Exploring the
Hybridisation of Electroacoustic and Metal
curated by Andreas Weixler
© Kerim
Belet 2021, Cyprus.
Berk Yağlı
(born 1999) is a Cypriot guitarist, composer, and producer. His
mission with his music has been to talk about social, political, and
philosophical matters interestingly to invite the listeners into
reflecting on the topics. He is working on hybridisation between
electroacoustic music and metal as part of his PhD at the University
of the Arts London. He has been active in the UK since 2017. His
works have been presented internationally. He is regularly invited
to compose his music in studios throughout the world. He received
numerous awards for his compositions in competitions around the
world.
http://www.berkyagli.me/portfolio/
16.00 CMS invited lecture #49
Hybridity in Music: Current Literature, Strategies, Methods, and the
Hybridisation of Electroacoustic Music and Metal
The talk/presentation will focus on musical hybridity and critical
methods developed for the hybridization of electroacoustic and metal
music (as part of the presenter's Ph.D. research). These methods are
formed to build a blueprint for hybrid composers (ultimately not
only specific to metal and electroacoustic but for other genres as
well that combines spectromorphological focused music with harmony
and rhythm-based music since this type of hybridity requires a
unique set of challenges and complexities). As technology increases
at a rapid rate and postmodern conditions only grow stronger as
lines get blurry, hybridity has been more than a prominent musical
power to embrace this current condition and reflect through what is
considered music and art in the 21st century.
18.00 CMS Gesprächskonzert #25
Acousmatic Metal: Exploring the Hybridisation of Electroacoustic and
Metal
Acousmatic Metal: Exploring the Hybridisation of Electroacoustic and
Metal is a multichannel concert showcasing the work of Berk Yagli,
who is a composer and researcher. Through 6 pieces, we shall dive
through Berk's practice - mainly on musical hybridity; specifically
on hybridity between electroacoustic and metal. The performance
crafts a unique listening experience, unfolding an emerging creative
process with each piece aimed at different intersections between the
two genres.
Technology increases at a rapid rate and postmodern conditions only
grow stronger as lines get blurry. Consequently, hybridity has been
more than a prominent musical power to embrace this current
condition and reflect through what is considered music and art in
the 21st century (and challenge the notions of high art and low
art).
Progamm
1- Zen of Aggression
2- Grains of Temporality
3- Hypnagogic Hallucination Machinery
4- The Cycle of Life and Decay
5- Itsumade?
6- Transhuman
7- Ideological Distortion
Programme Notes
Ideological Distortion (2021)
Ideological Distortion is a piece which explores the dark side of
today's media, dilution of ideologies, and constant bombardment of
confusion. It invites the listener into reflecting on the issues and
feel the horror and hate that is constantly imposed on society
whether we individuals are lucid about it or not.
Zen of Aggression (2022)
In a world where saturation becomes the norm, little to no values
left without being commoditized, the environmental damage of the
actions has taken for granted, and opinions start to get one
dimensional, the people living in the society evolve to become numb
and alienated from overstimulation and getting out of touch with the
roots of the World. Zen of Aggression deals with these emerging
conditions and topics to produce an electroacoustic/metal hybrid
piece as aggressively as possible. The composer intends to present
this new way of living without compromising on the details of chaos.
Grains of Temporality (2022)
Grains of Temporality explores the ironic struggle of power,
justice, and equality dynamics that have long haunted many
civilizations and provides an abstract journey through our history
and future of civilizations via the grains of time. This piece aims
to hybridise metal and electroacoustic music through ideas of
eclecticism, and polystylism.
Hypnagogic Hallucination Machinery (2023)
Hypnagogic Hallucination Machinery is about the 21st-century
condition. Living in a hyper-consumer-based world, where everyone
happily becomes a commodity to take part in society, the concepts of
individuality, freedom, privacy, and humanity once again become
crucial to be questioned and discussed. The sea of endless escapism,
simultaneously fractured and monotonous people and ideas, we are now
a part of the systematic hallucination machine more than ever. This
piece aims to reflect these topics in an auditory way.
The Cycle of Life and Decay (2023)
The Cycle of Life and Decay is about the condition that surrounds
all living things (and arguably our universe): All things are bound
to a never-ending cycle of life, growth, and decay. Unlike our
general human perception (which generates illusions that the life we
surround and create for ourselves is/will be stable), nothing is
permanent, and everything is bound to change. Life and death,
suffering and tranquillity, and ever changing states of
consciousness are what is stable. This continuous process of
creation, growth, and destruction of matter works as a solution for
the problem of heat death through entropy; allowing a universe that
is eternal, without a beginning or ending. In Buddhist belief,
Samsara is the endless cycle of life, death, and suffering (which
all living souls are part of and will be part of until they manage
to free themselves from it). This piece attempts to find a parallel
between these two notions (the cycle bounding living things, and the
cycle that considers our universe) to create a sonic farewell to
'Şampiyon Melekler' (two Cypriot volleyball teams (high school
girls-boys) that went to Turkey in February 2023 to compete in the
finals and lost their lives due to their hotel collapsing because of
the 7.8 Earthquake) wishing that they found liberation from this
cycle in which they are no longer experiencing suffering but only
tranquillity.
Transhuman (2021)
As technology improves at a rapid rate, promising a change in the
way of living and even the essence of what is human (for the human
species to be able to catch up with artificial intelligence), it is
now more than necessary to ask if as a species are we ready for a
radical and possibly an irreversible jump?
The Transhuman trilogy, consisting of three electroacoustic metal
hybrid pieces, focuses on finding certain methods to create balanced
hybrid pieces with the aesthetic of dystopian futurism. The main aim
behind this form of hybridity is to create hybrid pieces which have
aggressiveness, heaviness, and darkness of metal mixed with endless
timbral possibilities, spectromorphological thinking, and
abstractness of electroacoustic music.
‘Transhuman’ being the first of the trilogy of pieces, this piece is
all about experiencing the singularity process when every single
consciousness in the world is mixed with the artificial
consciousness. The line gets blurred and everything becomes
abstract. After this point, there is no turning back and the world
we know is no longer the same.
Itsumade? (2025)
Itsumade is a piece that aims to reflect an ongoing condition, of
being in a state of endless purgatory, that is, both related to
society and the individual—a never-ending cycle of war, destruction,
death, and scattering; all emerging from the brutal remainings of
outdated modes of world structures, that are acting as nothing but a
venom-infusing on every attempt made to get us out of the purgatory.
Recorded and composed mostly in Japan during a residency as a
composer, the piece is largely influenced by the Shinto concept of
Itsumade. Itsumade is a Yōkai monster, an eerie reptilian bird known
for crying "itsumade itsumade" (until when? Until when?)
almost every night around the fall of 1334 (in the Kenmu years) when
an epidemic illness was causing many deaths. Drawing from the story
of itsumade and the concept of being in a state of spiritual and
material purgatory, this piece aims to intersect these two points
together asking until when? Until when can we take a radical step
forward to change the process? The piece is hugely composed of
deconstructions of the written and produced metal pieces by me, 7 in
total, one of which was formed in Itoshima (Japan) during my stay in
2023. During my stay, out of complete surprise, I had a chance to
collaborate with the Japanese singer Kaori Takeda on a progressive
metal piece I worked on with inspirations from Japanese Rock/Metal.
Kaori helped me write lyrics and she sang brilliantly, delivering
her raw and unique energy.