Get album here:
ahossan-resina.bandcamp.com/album/ego-death

The seed of Ego Death was planted in 2020 during Weavings—a durational remote improvisation conceived and curated by Nicolás Jaar and the Unsound Festival team. This bold experiment brought together 12 musicians from around the world in real time via Zoom, and marked the first collaboration between Resina and Aho Ssan. Their intuitive musical synergy was immediate, revealing a shared vocabulary despite working with radically different tools and instruments.

That moment became the beginning of an evolving creative partnership. In 2021, Resina contributed to Rhizomes, Aho Ssan’s album inspired by the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. The duo later reunited for alive version of Weavings to wide critical acclaim, before premiering their collaborative project Ego Death at Unsound Kraków in 2022. Their debut album will be released via Berlin-based Subtext Recordings in early Summer of 2025.

Across the album’s eight chapters, a wordless narrative unfolds–one of dissolution and reassembly, revealing music’s profound capacity as a language of emotion, subjectivity, and spirituality. Their music brims with dark, cinematic intensity, stretching the tonality of the cello to its breaking point and exploring the textures left in its wake. Crackling noise, field recordings, and expansive synthesis shape their compositions, bringing a dynamic and ever-shifting sonic terrain.

The transfer of consciousness from the human body to an electronic medium can be understood as a conversion of purely electrical impulses—signals originating in the brain and transmitted into another kind of electronic system, one that might be more accessible to others.

A familiar question arises: do we lose any kind of knowledge in that transformation? Or does the process actually open something up—allowing for a loosening of control over the creative flow, an invitation to surrender total authority, to embrace attentiveness and openness, and above all: to dissolve boundaries?

This may become especially meaningful when the act of creation is no longer solitary, and no longer only for oneself. In a world driven by serotonin and dopamine loops, demanding constant productivity and performance, stepping off the path of ego can feel like a relief—even a form of resilience, or spiritual resistance.

Resina is the alias of Warsaw-based cellist and composer Karolina Rec. Since signing to FatCat/130701, she has released three solo albums: Resina (2016), Traces (2018), and Speechless (2021), a choral work for 24 voices. Her EP Traces Remixed features reworks by Ben Frost, Abul Mogard, Lotic, and Ian William Craig—artists known for pushing the boundaries of electronic and experimental music. Resina’s solo work blends processed cello, voice, and electronics, moving between ambient, noise, heavy percussion, and minimalist structures. She frequently collaborates across disciplines, composing for film, theatre, and games. Her music balances the tension between the biological and the synthetic, the intimate and the extreme, carving out a space where classical forms unravel into unclassifiable emotional landscapes.

Aho Ssan is the artist name of Paris-based Niamké Désiré. After a background in graphic design and cinema, he began creating digital instruments and composing electronic music. His debut LP Simulacrum, released by Subtext, navigated ideas of false inclusivity and identity in modern society, drawing on the theories of Jean Baudrillard and his own experience of growing up Black in France. He’s collaborated with IRCAM and won the France Télévisions award for his film music. His follow-up album Rhizomes explored the complexity and fragmentation of posthuman identity through modular synthesis and collaboration. With Ego Death, he further expands that vision, entering a profound dialogue with acoustic sound and shared authorship.