Asaf Yahel Meluka

What can be revealed to a listener when music stops serving the habits on which it relies? What opens up for a composition that chooses to exist within the initial, freedom-bearing moment in which the very experience of listening is still taking shape?

These questions lie at the core of the practical-theoretical research and compositional practice developed by Asaf Yahel Meluka, a sound artist and composer working in the fields of musique concrète and electroacoustic music. They will be presented both in a book documenting the research and in a listening concert for a multichannel composition based on this practice.

The composition presented here, created according to these principles for a multichannel speaker system, invites the listener into a space where listening becomes an ongoing act of personal decision-making, whether conscious or unconscious. It moves between density and clarity, between fluid, delicate inner movement and assertive physical presence, between fixity and surprise. The work seeks to transform the act of listening itself into a site of doubt, inquiry, and discovery, in order to reorganize and create the conditions for the freedom of the listener: the mechanism that drives it. 

“And who knows—perhaps it is better thus for man: to inherit only the shell of the word, without its core, so that each time he may fill it anew, or add to it, from his own strength, and illuminate it with the light of his own soul.” 

Revealment and Concealment in Language, H.N Bialik, 1915