Byzar is an American experimental electronic music ensemble, considered one of the founders of the Illbient genre, along with DJ Spooky, Sub Dub, We, and the Soundlab collective, active in the New York experimental dance/electronic music scene during the 1990s.
Background
Founded in 1994 by Akin Adams, the earliest Byzar recordings were long-form textural soundscapes made with a 4-track cassette recording of multiple layers of heavily processed guitars, found objects and a badly damaged Farfisa organ. Adams played guitar in an experimental rock trio called S*A*M, worked as an engineer in a hip-hop and dancehall studio called "Midimation" with artists such as Mikey Dread and KRS-One, and co-hosted a weekly event called "The Abstrakt Lounge" featuring Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky at the "3 of Cups" basement lounge in New York's East Village in 1993.
DJ Spooky lived in the nearby Gas Station, a former gas station turned into a renegade sculpture garden in Alphabet City, and began hosting multimedia events called "Molecular", which attracted artists from the burgeoning Brooklyn dub scenes, DJ's, performance artists and installation designers, who would have free rein to transform the space with inflatables, video projections and various artistic efforts. Adams would provide sound equipment and organization help, and would often create electronic guitar soundscapes at one end of the garage space while Spooky mixed raw breakbeats at the other end.
Abstrakt Lounge and Molecular were part of a network of happenings and events, including the Abstrakt Wave, founded by Tim Sweet in a performance lounge called the RV on NYC's Lower East Side, where Adams began performing as an 'ambient DJ', playing the byzar soundscapes layered with other records and rudimentary beats. Other musicians, Including Hector Becerra, a noted NYC session drummer who played on Taylor Dayne's tour, and Manny Oquendo, who had been a Midimation client with the LES group "Hallucination Station", began jamming with Adams during his sets, and Byzar began to grow into a fluid collective. Miguel Lopez, an NYU grad who also worked as an engineer, offered after-hours studio time at Mike Thorne's "Stereo Society Studios", home of Softcell, and the Byzar began intensive studio experimentation.
Another regular performer & collaborator at Abstract Wave, composer and electric midi violinist Karthik Swaminathan, was referred by NYU classmate Lucy Walker, and he and Adams recorded their first collaboration for Elliot Sharp's State of the Union compilation. As Byzar expanded, Karthik brought in jam collaborators & performance artists Laura Marie Williams and Karl Francke to add visual, performance and sonic elements to Byzar's live show.
Byzar was envisioned as an electronic improvisational experiment, and did not adhere to song structure or popular music formats. Live shows and studio recordings were entirely improvised, with a rotating line-up of "expressionists" playing various instruments and devices. Influenced by dub music, Byzar applied dub studio mixing techniques to their live performances, and varied atmospheric textures with polyrhythmic electronic dance music.
Members
Members include: Akin Adams : electronic & acoustic rhythms, electronic guitar, effects and live mixing, codenamed 'Quantyk' for his focus on all things rhythmic Manny Oqeundo aka MegMan : electric bass, analog synthesizers, processed vocal effects, codenamed 'Acoustyk' for his background as an acoustic musician Miguel Diaz de Lopez: engineering and electronic sound design, samplers and analog synths, codenamed 'Ylyptyk' for his eccentric use of delays and loops Karthik Swaminathan : electric violin and effects, codenamed 'Karttyk' for eponymity; currently known as Kit Krash Laura Marie Williams : electric bass, vocals Lucy Walker : DJ and sound effects Hector Becerra : live drums, processed acoustic & vocal effects, codenamed 'Elektryk' as a contrast to 'Acoustyk' Karl Francke : harmonica and custom analog synth/oscilloscope controller
Methods
Byzar developed a “technorganic” praxis for audio production, harmonizing the vital instincts of live musicianship with the transformative potential of digital technology. The Gaiatronyk album’s rhythmic programming metaphorically explores genetic theory: “phenotypes” (audible sound events) of certain rhythms are combined with the “genotypes” (rhythmic event sequences) of others, creating new hybrids further manipulated in real time during the recording and mixing process.