OTTO a raw trip through Balkan beats and improvisation

OTTO makes music that is minimalistic in vocabulary, but intense in energy. The three musicians play the same instrument: the tapan, a Balkan percussion instrument with only two skin sounds. In addition, they also use metal percussion instruments such as gong and bronze plate. The strength of OTTO lies in developing musical ideas with a very limited sound palette. The musical structure is mainly created by the placement in time and the interweaving of the three instruments.

The performance consists of two parts that flow into each other, with both fixed sections and completely improvised passages. It begins with a long build-up on a traditional Bulgarian seven-bar, in which subtle shifts between the three tapans create increasingly complex polyrhythms.