Galya Bisengalieva tells historical stories through poignant compositions. The Kazakh violinist’s music stems from deep research into her heritage and Soviet memory, finding undertold stories and retelling them through mood-conjuring, expansive music. It is at once personal and communal, a means of sharing the past through music. With Polygon Reflections, Bisengalieva expands her storytelling by inviting nine electronic musicians to offer their own takes on her 2024 album Polygon, which was a stark musical response to the life and aftermath of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site (The Polygon). The resulting album is a collage of different takes that each aim for and explode the inherent horror underlying Bisengalieva’s original works.
Soviet history has been central to Bisengalieva’s composition and performance practice since releasing Aralkum in 2020, which told the story of the shrinking Aral Sea with eerie violin and field recordings, eliciting grief and hope in textural, broad-stroked melodies. Her follow-up album, 2024’s Polygon, continued with this theme, but here her music is searing and haunted, capturing the horror of nuclear testing practices. The original version of Polygon was surprisingly barren; much of Bisengalieva’s music before centered rich violin melodies born from a mix of classical minimalism, ambient and rich drones. But Polygon made use of distance and empty spaces, evoking the ghostly, haunted memory of the dark history it recalled.
The best remixes find the underlying theme of a song and run with it into a new direction, and with Polygon Reflections, much of the original album’s desolation is collapsed in favour of louder, more harrowing textures that travel to its emotional core. Each reflection takes the voice of the remixing artist, offering quite a bit of variation between tracks, but they’re connected through the darkness of The Polygon and stories of the people affected by it. Opener ‘Alash-Kala (The Bug Reflection)’ sets the stage with a blaring alarm rippling around strong pulses; ‘Saryzhal (KMRU Reflection)’ continues in this vein with a buzzing drone surrounding Bisengalieva’s delicate violin.
Perhaps most heart-wrenching is when these reflections pull back, offering a new take on Bisengalieva’s music while maintaining the delicacy of the source material. ‘Sary-Uzen (Lucy Liyou Reflection)’ transforms the original song into an ambient lament and gets to the heart of the original compositions – the despair, the memory, the terror of history. By the time the end of the album rolls around, and Bisengalieva’s violin is at its loudest, it feels like a voice unleashed, a final call to beckon toward the long tail of the past.
