JakoJako is committed to exploring the spaces that emerge between the technical and emotional sides of electronic music, fostering a relationship to sound that implements both rigorous knowledge and unrestrained intuition. Engaged in a constant dialogue around the use of hardware in music, JakoJako’s artistic output is informed by the tension and release of techno, but ultimately coloured by ever-expanding forms and structures that play with the contours of the genre.
As a live performer and DJ, she searches for spontaneity amongst the mathematical patterns of arpeggios and loops, locating kinetic energies that convert into moments of dancefloor catharsis. A resident at Berghain, her multifaceted approach has taken her from some of the most respected electronic music festivals in the world - including Dekmantel, Awakenings, and Fusion - to institutions of great cultural significance like the Royal Albert Hall and the Barbican.
Arrangements of sound that speak to both vastness and intimacy underscore her productions, which have landed releases on labels like Tresor, Mute and Leisure System, and remixes for New Order and Martin Gore, amongst others. Infinitely curious about the threads that connect different genres, as opposed to the rigidity of genre itself, her music is driven by a desire to document the potentials of analogue and modular synthesis, and to consider new contexts within which these could exist. This is reflected in her ongoing relationship with Berlin institution SchneidersLaden, where she worked for a number of years and continues to spend time regularly, engaging with new machines. She elaborates - “It's still important for me to go there; the exchange of knowledge and ideas is invaluable and I feel like I want to give back just something of what I got over the years”
Forthcoming on Mute, her next album Têt 41 - due April 2025 - is an expansion on these ideas. Rhythmic fragments weave between analogue processing and melodic distillations, swirling in organic cycles of warehouse maximalism and sonic minutiae that speak to the somatic and unworldly in equal measure. Recorded in Vietnam during the Tết Lunar New Year celebrations and made with a minimal hardware setup, the album taps into a deep understanding of machine-based music illuminated by references to her heritage, reflecting on notions of rebirth, and the pursuit of a sonic core. From this simplicity emerge some of her most expansive, unworldly compositions to date.
Ultimately, it’s the raw feeling of sound that has sustained a lifelong obsession with its intricacies and processes, and the compulsion to search for new energies in musical hardware continues to ensure JakoJako is one of the most intriguing artists in electronic music today.