‘Toska’ is a dream-like reflection, an attempt to grasp onto old familial memories and suspend them within time. It explores feelings of physical and cultural distance from family, during a period when I've never felt further away.

The foundation of ‘Toska’ is field recordings captured years ago while visiting family across Russia and Armenia: frozen in subzero temperatures, skiing, ice-skating, falling over, laughing, screaming. I asked various family members to send me voice recordings, which I then heavily distorted, contrasted with my own vocals, and hung over a resolute beat.

As memories so easily lost to time and the obscurity of nostalgia, it was important for me to affix calls to specific speakers, such that as you complete the walk, you will have collected pieces of the patchwork, embraced in the full palette of my memories. And me too. Perhaps as a way of asserting control over my own future, present, and past, when that has never felt more evanescent.

This sound work will be immediately relatable to people across the globe, particularly children of immigrants. It's about longing for both familial connection and a sense of home that's eluded us, never allowing us the chance to truly experience it as our own.