Ostium
2026
A voice always starts with an aperture. Ostium opens a wound and digs it into a cavity. Sinking deeper into this hole, it exudes a voice, one distributed between organs and mechanic parts. This gesture speaks to voice as always being something artificial, synthetic and evolving.
As a vocalist my research into the physiology of body parts that work together to produce the sound that we understand as voice, made me interested in certain extended vocal techniques. Overtone singing, or the pitched vocal fry, are ways of phonating that can feel magical, alien, or otherworldly, yet they emanate from the same vocal apparatus that we all possess and use every day. In 1934, Marcel Mauss wrote that at the bottom of all of our mystical states there are techniques of the body. I believe the vocalizing body in itself, in its most ordinary form to be quite magical, and to develop and explore new ways of working with it as the highest form of sorcery.
If, as Joan La Barbara said, voice is the original instrument, then I propose that voice is also the original synthesiser. Most people are not aware of the hidden potential they carry, that the voice they consider their own is not a predestined given. None of the organs which take part in voice production are fixed: the lungs and the surrounding musculature, the larynx and the vocal cords, the vocal tract, pharynx and the oral cavity are all malleable, almost modular pieces. Thanks to this fleshy flexibility the human voice is a shape shifter, which has the ability to sound like anything. It is a bodily technology, one of our very first technical instruments. Yet it has a way of moving beyond the flesh. It travels and distributes itself onto other agents through a tireless plasticity: voice can be mediated through other technologies, be produced digitally, or be found as resemblance in sounds that are not wholly voices. Where do we draw the outlines of voice, how can we pinpoint it if it can be anything?
Ostium is an experiment in synthesising a new voice out of my own and the materiality of tape. Perhaps the task is not to pin it down, but to ask what the voice summons and manifests. What kind of ostia open up, what can they do, where do they lead to?
Composed and recorded by Julia Koffler during 2025 in Berlin, using only voice and reel to reel tape machines:
Revox A77, Revox B77, Nagra IV and an Uher 4000.
Dedicated lovingly to Csucsu
Mixing: Júlia Koffler & Diego Behncke
Mastering: Nick Klein
Design: Dominique Saiegh
Special thanks:
Victor Burton, Lottie Sebes, Diego Behncke
Revox A77, Revox B77, Nagra IV and an Uher 4000.
Dedicated lovingly to Csucsu
Mixing: Júlia Koffler & Diego Behncke
Mastering: Nick Klein
Design: Dominique Saiegh
Special thanks:
Victor Burton, Lottie Sebes, Diego Behncke