Today I’m presenning you to the Toronto based project Htennek Niwsha from Toronto. From what I understand Htennek Niwhsa is a duo consisting of the two artists Ashwin + Ken of PANTōNE VU. I’m gonna leave you with their complete answers below:
Htennek Niwhsa is the passion project of Ashwin + Ken of PANTōNE VU dedicated to the work of a little-known composer they discovered fortuitously when cleaning out the basement of an apartment they rented at Dundas and Bathurst in Toronto. Amongst Htennek’s belongings, they found a folio of hand-transcribed piano music. Ashwin+ Ken immediately fell in love with the tender songs and set out to find out as much as they could about this mysterious composer.
Sadly, their sleuthing led to several dead ends and they were left with only an assortment of Htennek’s possessions—a badge and ID from Htennek’s work as a high school caretaker, postcards, polaroids, VHS tapes, a few bowties and a collection of Htennek’s compositions. Armed with two ribbon microphones and a felted upright piano they started to record—preserving Htennek’s work for posterity and with each recording getting closer to knowing the man they know very little about.
This track was released as a single on the 9th of June, 2023, and will be apart of an upcoming album.
Tell us something about your track From offering no answers!
We recorded a felted upright piano in an old church near Stratford, Ontario. We initially tried a bunch of different microphones but found that two ribbon microphones placed super close to the hammers gave us the intimate sound we were looking for.
Thanks for this!