Kaiwei is the progressive electronic music project of Calvin Kaiˇ-Weiˉ Chang, a Brooklyn-based Taiwanese composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer of contemporary music.
Stylistically aligning with traditions of industrial, glitch, ambient & progressive dance, Kaiwei’s works often explore combinations of experimental techniques, diverse compositional approaches & varying forms. His compositions often emphasize timbral & textural elements, while fusing a vast improvisational vocabulary with unorthodox post-production, songwriting and sound design methods.
As a producer, he has produced for musicians such as Elliot Cole, Cherophobiac, Luisa Bressan, Andrés Volkov, Zena Marie and Olivia D. Jones. As a performer-composer, he has worked with NY-based artists such as Ethan Cohn, Pauline Roberts, Shinya Lin, Jonathan Reisin, choreographer Audrey Chou, fashion designer Barbara Bao, graphic designer Nancy Hu, Hamburg-based visual artist Melanie Stirner, and was the composer and sound designer of theater director Ichen Wang’s 2022 stage play, Dress In Code.
Kaiwei’s Debut LP Reprocessor (due for 2023 release)
is a sonic documentation and "musicalization" of Covid19 era found sounds, with songs composed between 2020-2022.
In lieu of conventional "reworking" (in pharmaceutical manufacturing terminology entailing altering processing strategies/combining additional elements to yield varying results) of source materials, over 2 hours in length of raw recordings are repetitively reinforced, dissected and extracted for expressive sonic events. No additional sounds are added subsequently. The goal remained making a point of solely utilizing and synthesizing pre recorded samples. They are hence reprocessed, rather than reworked or recycled, as performative & improvisational mediums and lush layers of ever-morphing textures. More than 120 unique samples were captured over the span of 3 years, and over 20 musicians and artists contributed their voices.
Stylistically aligning with traditions of industrial, glitch, ambient & progressive dance, Kaiwei’s works often explore combinations of experimental techniques, diverse compositional approaches & varying forms. His compositions often emphasize timbral & textural elements, while fusing a vast improvisational vocabulary with unorthodox post-production, songwriting and sound design methods.
As a producer, he has produced for musicians such as Elliot Cole, Cherophobiac, Luisa Bressan, Andrés Volkov, Zena Marie and Olivia D. Jones. As a performer-composer, he has worked with NY-based artists such as Ethan Cohn, Pauline Roberts, Shinya Lin, Jonathan Reisin, choreographer Audrey Chou, fashion designer Barbara Bao, graphic designer Nancy Hu, Hamburg-based visual artist Melanie Stirner, and was the composer and sound designer of theater director Ichen Wang’s 2022 stage play, Dress In Code.
Kaiwei’s Debut LP Reprocessor (due for 2023 release)
is a sonic documentation and "musicalization" of Covid19 era found sounds, with songs composed between 2020-2022.
In lieu of conventional "reworking" (in pharmaceutical manufacturing terminology entailing altering processing strategies/combining additional elements to yield varying results) of source materials, over 2 hours in length of raw recordings are repetitively reinforced, dissected and extracted for expressive sonic events. No additional sounds are added subsequently. The goal remained making a point of solely utilizing and synthesizing pre recorded samples. They are hence reprocessed, rather than reworked or recycled, as performative & improvisational mediums and lush layers of ever-morphing textures. More than 120 unique samples were captured over the span of 3 years, and over 20 musicians and artists contributed their voices.
