3/04/2025

JakoJako Shares New Track "Kumquat" || New Album 'Tết 41' Out 4/25 On Mute

JAKOJAKO SHARES NEW TRACK “KUMQUAT”
 

NEW ALBUM TẾT 41 OUT 4/25 ON MUTE 
 

Photo credit: Katja Ruge

 

Today Berlin-based modular synthesist JakoJako (aka Sibel Koçer) has shared a new track from her forthcoming album, Tết 41, out on limited edition vinyl and digitally on April 25, 2025.

The new track, “Kumquat”, full of bright searching melodies working across polyrhythmic beats, expands on themes explored across the album. The album was recorded in Vietnam during the Tết Lunar New Year celebrations where kumquats are ubiquitous as a key symbol of Tết, bringing prosperity and abundance.

Listen to “Kumquat” HERE.

Tết 41 is, in many ways, a distillation of ideas Koçer has been exploring for many years. Tapping into a deep understanding of machine-based music and illuminated by references to her heritage, Tết 41 reflects on notions of rebirth and the pursuit of a sonic core. The album was created with a minimal hardware set up and from this simplicity emerges some of her most expansive, unworldly compositions to date.

Koçer explains, “I wanted to collect the atmospheres of Vietnam, and strip it back to my language - electronic music. I don’t have huge ties to the traditions of my Vietnamese family, so being able to experience them with my mother and then bring the Lunar Celebration - the colorful flowers, food and customs - back to Europe through music has helped me realize how important this side of my heritage is.”

The new track follows Lì xì, named after the small red envelopes gifted at Lunar New Year, which was described by Clash magazine as “…a dose of Pointillist electronics that utilises undulating synth work to craft a heady dose of electronic world-building".

A big part of her production process lies in searching for spontaneity, which was heightened during the creation of this album, on just a Eurorack and a Waldorf Iridium Core. While normally she would have a computer to mix and arrange the record, the effects and sequencers of the gear became her tools. She expands: “The more you play with a single machine the more you get to know it. You’ll get muscle memory and play it more like an actual instrument, instead of treating it as a tool.”

Opening and closing with field recordings taken during the Lunar New Year celebrations, she uses the space in between to cast new frameworks, allowing melodic cycles to flow autonomously. Rhythmic fragments weave between analogue processing and harmonic distillations, swirling in organic cycles of warehouse maximalism and sonic minutiae that speak to the somatic and spectral in equal measure.

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 propelled by ever-expanding forms and structures that play with the contours of the genre. A producer, live artist and DJ who has held a residency at Berghain while touring some of the world’s most respected electronic music institutions, she delves into the mathematical patterns of arpeggios and loops, locating kinetic energies that convert into moments of dancefloor catharsis.

Infinitely curious about the threads that connect different genres, as opposed to the rigidity of genre itself, Tết 41 is driven by a desire to document the potentials of analogue and modular synthesis, and to consider new contexts within which these could exist. It’s also a bold and generous vision of new sonic worlds.

JakoJako’s Tết 41 is out on Mute on limited edition vinyl and digitally on April 25, 2025. 

Pre-order it HERE.

JakoJako DJ and live dates can be found HERE.



Tết 41 album art

Track listing:

1. Xin chào
2. Kumquat
3. Lì xì 
4. Hoa đào
5. Ghi-Ta
6. Đà Nẵng
7. Dragon Bridge
8. Chim sẻ
9. Gió
10. Cảm ơn


CONNECT WITH JAKOJAKO: 
WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | SOUNDCLOUD

CONNECT WITH MUTE:

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All photos by Alexander Laurence