“…singular and deliciously unique…deeply affecting music that dismisses any need to pin it down to a type”
John Parry, Backseat Mafia
www.backseatmafia.com/album-review-seljuk-rustum-cardboard-castles-melodic-mischevious-and-magical-fresh-soundscapes-and-songs-from-southern-india/
“…an album suffused with an atmosphere of serious play, with joy and surprise as the tonic notes”
Francis Gooding, The Wire
Seljuk Rustum is a Kochi (Cochin) based arts practitioner originally from Kannur, Kerala. He is a painter, musician, curator, producer, recording engineer and the founder and current Creative Director of performance space, Forplay Society.
As a musician he plays alto saxophone, guitar, percussion and synthesizer with several bands and an expanding collective of like minded artists. Being a self-taught musician, his sound work is an extension of his visual work and his music is a mixture of joyful noise and simple naive melodies.
Seljuk has performed and recorded with artists such as Otomo Yoshihide, Senyawa, Hada Benedito Mateo, Eiko Ishibashi, Mitsuaki Matsumoto, Pisitakun, Yuen Chee Wai, Dharma, DJ Sniff, Duncan Bruce, Hilary Jeffery and Hayden Chisholm. He has also worked with many theatre practitioners & performance artists in India making music for theatre as well as curating shows & workshops with actors and performers from around India.
The recordings on Cardboard Castles were made at Seljuk's studio in Kochi between 2016 and 2021 and were mostly instant compositions and single take recordings created in collaboration with a number of fellow travellers who've passed through the studio. At the inception of the album's creation Seljuk sought to reflect on what freedom means and what the musical limitations of this are, and how his involvement as a free improviser might project fixed ideas onto a listener. He wanted to use an improvisational approach that focussed on presenting ideas with a beauty inherent in their sound, coalescing these into song form. Cardboard Castles is the resulting album and application of these concepts.
We at Hive Mind feel privileged to have worked with Seljuk to bring you these deeply personal and highly idiosyncratic works which really do defy easy description. Ranging from strange and wonky electronic improvisations, gentle acoustic instrumentals such as the lush opener with the input of the Cochin String Orchestra, through experiments in traditional Indian song, this album will keep you guessing. Everything appears touched with a mischievous sense of playfulness that's maybe reflected in the face of the grinning camel that adorns the sleeve.
We're sure you'll agree there's plenty to delight the listener on this strange dream of an album, Seljuk's first to receive a physical release.
The CD version comes in a gatefold card digisleeve in an edition of 250 copies
released February 3, 2023
Seljuk Rustum: Piano, Synthesizer, Sequencer, Acoustic & Electric Guitar, Saxophone, Voice, Percussion
Sekhar Sudhir: Violin on Tracks 5, 7&8, Acoustic Guitar on Track 4, Mandolin & Melodica on Track 3
Akshay Ashokan: Electric Guitar on Track 4
Joffy Chirayath: Drums on Tracks 3 & 10
Cochin String Orchestra: Strings on Track 1 (Thanks to Duncan Roy Bruce)
Produced, Engineered & Mixed by Seljuk Rustum
Tracks 9,4 & 8 Edited by Sekhar Sudhir
Track 3 voice from the Alan Lomax Archive from recordings made in Kerala in the 1970s to document the Malayam language
Track 2 was composed for BUS (a theatre performance Written & Directed by Firoz Khan)
Thanks to Sugathy Sahadevan for her assistance with lyrics by helping write a song in a language I speak but never figured out how to read or write in.
Assistant Engineer - Irfan Adil Navaz
Album Art: Unknown Artist (found on the walls near Palayam Market, Kozhikode.
All tracks composed by Seljuk Rustum