Pisitakun Kuantalang - Sosleep (2018)

Created shortly after the death of his father to cancer, Thai artist Pisitakun has combined traditional mourning instruments with harsh noise and techno beats, wrapping them around intimate recordings of the hospital machinery keeping his father alive during his final days.

The result is SOSLEEP, a meditation on the raw, messy chaos of grief. Opening with the sound of a Buddhist monk’s funeral chants, the record’s BMP is led by real recordings of his father heartbeat, turned into electronic blips by the hospital pulse gauge.

Droning, aching Thai funeral instruments mingle with the sound of his father’s oxygenator to express the woozy disorientation of loss.

As is tradition in Thailand, Pisitakun joined a Buddhist monastery for a short period as a monk following his father’s passing. The sounds of the monastery, along with his father’s funeral service, also bled into this record.