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Subtext Recordings

ātamōn

by Amina Hocine

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card
    Download available in 24-bit/48kHz.

      £7 GBP  or more

     

  • Book/Magazine + Digital Album

    Alongside the release, a limited edition 62-page hardback book by Amina Hocine and Jennifer Lucy Allan extends the work in text, mapping its inner contours and sonic logic.

    Measuring 130 x 190 mm and printed on Holmen Book Cream 80gsm paper, it features a black canvas cover with a silver foil-debossed sigil, offering a tactile and intimate reading experience that deepens the project’s themes.

    Book designed by Monika Janulevičiūtė
    Book edited by Rebecca Bligh
    Photos by Ekaterina Lukoshkova

    Includes unlimited streaming of ātamōn via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Download available in 24-bit/48kHz.
    ships out within 3 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      £16 GBP or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    The CD comes in Pantone with a silver base, housed in a matt-laminated four-panel digipak. Both the cover and disc feature details from Aminas graphic scores for ātamōn.

    Includes unlimited streaming of ātamōn via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Download available in 24-bit/48kHz.
    ships out within 7 days
    edition of 200 

      150 SEK or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    This special bundle brings together the two physical releases of ātamōn.

    Includes unlimited streaming of ātamōn via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Download available in 24-bit/48kHz.
    ships out within 7 days
    edition of 50 

      300 SEK or more 

     

1.
ātamōn I 29:29
2.
ātamōn II 30:28

about

With simple materials found in hardware stores—such as PVC pipes, water hoses, and ball valves—powered by a construction site air compressor, mesmerizing drones emerge, challenging our expectations of the material.

Originally inspired by foghorns and sirens, Amina set out to gain control over these sounds by building a foghorn organ. However, what emerged from this experiment was something far beyond foghorns: a hauntingly electronic-sounding acoustic instrument, spreading frequencies like lasers, which Amina has come to call her sound crystals. These sound crystals translate surprisingly well to recording and are best enjoyed through speakers.

Originally conceived during a residency at Skogen in Gothenburg, ātamōn is the result of a personal and spiritual exploration. Drawing from years of conversations with a spiritual advisor and therapeutic work on inner archetypes, Amina transforms composition into a tool for self-inquiry. The piece centers around a deconstructed version of the foghorn organ, with eight pipes placed throughout the room—each representing a distinct psychological archetype, such as The Safe Place, Hyperarousal, or Original Face.

The title ātamōn, derived from Old High German meaning “to breathe,” reflects the instrument as a living, communicating organism. With pipes instead of actors and sound in place of speech, the composition unfolds like a wordless theatre, where frequencies act out the tensions, longings, and contradictions of human experience.

Recorded later in the vast, reverberant space of Spelhuset at Ställbergs gruva—an out-of-use iron mine in rural Sweden—ātamōn becomes a sonic ritual: an encounter between body, resonance, and the infinite. The space itself, once housing the massive wheels for the mine's elevator, amplifies the work, as each sound lingers, refracts, and folds back into itself.

In ātamōn I, we hear the play unfolding as the different parts communicate and test each other. Each archetype believes it serves a purpose, even when its effect is painful. The work gives these parts space to speak, ultimately bringing them into harmony—not to villainize them, but to listen.

In ātamōn II, the space itself speaks with the instrument. Moving through the sound field with microphones, Amina activates the acoustic properties of the old chamber. Each gesture becomes an invitation for the mine to respond, as the sound draws from the resonance of the place.

The result is drone-based music where sonic textures emerge slowly, yet are punctuated by moments of sudden intensity—alarm-like signals and interlocking polyrhythms that pierce through the density like flashes of insight. Elsewhere, the sound becomes vast and oceanic, inviting the listener to drift through a continuously shifting field of resonance.

Informed by inner inquiry, symbolic systems, spiritual science, and the re-enchantment of sound, ātamōn constructs a delicate architecture of vibration—a memory not of events, but of presence. Rather than telling a story, the work opens a space for listening, sensing, and transformation.

Alongside the release, a book by Amina Hocine and Jennifer Lucy Allan further extends the work in text, mapping its inner contours and sonic logic.

credits

released July 2, 2025

Mixed and Recorded by Amina Hocine and Luka Aron
Cover Art by Amina Hocine
Mastered by James Ginzburg
Book designed by Monika Janulevičiūtė
Book edited by Rebecca Bligh
Photos by Ekaterina Lukoshkova
Comms by Maria Orciuoli @ KO-HUM

Published by Multiverse Media Publishing.
© & ℗ Subtext / Multiverse LTD 2025

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Amina Hocine Stockholm, Sweden

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