label, dj and platform for a wide range of underappreciated music from north africa and west asia

"Khoum" is a musical term associated with Dynamics. It is derived from the traditional Armenian notation system called "khaz" (Neumatic notation system). 

Khoum was founded in Beirut in 2015 by Hovsep Aghjian & Haig Gragian after musical experiments and discussions about the nature of Armenian ethnic music and its progress in a cultural and historical context and its relationship to regional music and more specifically Caucasian and Anatolian music. The aim of the project is rediscovering, reviving and redefining Ottoman Armenian music in an attempt to render and compose musical pieces in a modern context. 

Sérm, Khoum’s first album, was composed, recorded and mixed in Khoum's private studio which is located in Gankar House. The material of the album comprises impressions and influences gathered from the recollected tunes during our field work in Lebanon. The project is also a journey going through the seeds of our collective identity and consciousness and reaching individual expression. which is reflected through the use of different musical genres, experiments and electronic processes.

Contact me if you have a legal problem with the diffusion of your music.

Astrophysical, hyperbodily and alchemical, Eazuka Khazrik’s live musical practice is deeply devoted to communal solace, collective transcendence and trans-generational healing. With genre-defying mercurial treatments of voice, drums and space, her sonic scapes intimately investigate the ecological and techno-political premises of continua we inhabit, co-create or forget. Concocting scores from trans-millennial compendia of healing, space and biosensing technologies and on-site/online detritus, her live and hybrid sets are deeply informed by ancestral chanting traditions – like Armenian sharakan, Levantine mawwal and Iraqi radh – skewed with a quaint techno and incomputable entrancing rhythms.

Performing internationally in a wide range of spaces from clubs to museums, theatres and quarries, she ceremonially uses spaces of congregation to search for locally entrenched universalisms that could collectively respond to the dystopias of our times. Her indisciplinary practice as artist, composer, producer, technologist, educatress and DJ also ranges from composition to collaboration, machine learning, visual art, ecotoxicology and history of science and music. In parallel to performing live, teaching speech synthesis and voice-based electronic music production, and producing multi-channel sound installations, Khazrik also composes scores for film, video games and performances and writes about science, cosmology and music. She holds BAs in Linguistics and in Theatre from the Lebanese University(LB) and a MS in Art, Culture and Technology from MIT(US) where she was awarded the Ada Lovelace prize.

She has performed her solo music at ALL(CN, 2018), Ballroom Blitz(LB,2019), CTM Festival(DE,2020), Haus der Kulturen der Welt(DE, 2018), ICA Boston(US, 2015), Les Urbaines(CH,2018),Rewire Festival(NL,2021), SONICA Festival(SI, 2021), Supersonic Festival(UK, 2022), Takseer Festival(DE, 2022) and Theater Der Welt(DE, 2014), among others. Her multi-channel sound installations have been commissioned by and exhibited at ar/ge kunst(IT,2020), Kunsthalle Wien(AT,2020) LACE(US,2017), LUMA Foundation(CH,2017), Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi(PL,2022) and Para Site(HK, 2021) among others. Her essays and short stories have been published in edited anthologies and multiple publications like Bidayat Journal(LB), Zweikommasieben(CH), MadaMasr(EG), Kohl Journal(LB), The Funambulist(FR) and Ibraaz(US) to name a few. Her indisciplinary research-based work has been presented at the Stanford Research Institute(US), the Arab Image Foundation(LB), Birbeck’s School of Law at UCL(UK), Center for Documentary Arts and Research at UCSC(US) and Amnesty International(UK & DE), among others.

Khazrik has been an artist fellow at Home Workspace Programme(2012-13), Digital Earth(2018-19), HfK Bremen(2020) and SHAPE Platform(2021-22) and is at present a fellow at If I Can’t Dance(2022-23) and Helmholtz Center (2022-23). As visiting faculty, she has taught voice-based electronic music, performance and techno-politics at HfK Bremen(DE, 2020), the FHNW Academy of Art and Design Basel(CH, 2021-22), the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg(DE, 2022-23) and guest lectured internationally. As independent technologist, she has worked on AI policy and digital rights internationally and is the founder of the techno-study group ‘READING COMPUTERS’, the peer-to-peer web platform and study;strategy;solidarity group ‘POST-CORONIALISM’ and the online transclusive research platform ‘خريطة الظلام Cartography of Darkness'. Having grown up around a quarry contaminated with military waste, she has been active in anti-militarist struggles for environmental justice since early adolescence.

For bookings: jessika@posteo.net

Octavekhoury is following