Aukai

Aukai was born of composer/instrumentalist Markus Sieber’s desire to create music that could work in tandem with film, video, theatre and the visual arts. The compositions also grew out of Sieber’s love affair with the ‘Ronroco’, a plucked string instrument from Argentina. On his latest album Chambers, released March 2026, Aukai strikes mesmerizing new chords. It’s intimate yet spacious, warm and evocative, drawing inspiration from the fine-tuned acoustical properties of the room where it was recorded: Saal 3 within Berlin’s historic Funkhaus complex, hosted since 2016 by Nils Frahm. Aukai describes it as “a dream sequence of sound”. The connecting thread is the space itself where the album was recorded, and the fact that it was created in just three non-consecutive days. “For me, Chambers became an experiment to explore expansion within self-imposed limitations and restrictions.” being the first album where he played all of the instruments himself. In keeping with the project’s minimalist constrained aesthetic, Sieber decided to mix the album in just one and a half days, working with Antonio Pulli at Saal 3 and without having any revisions after. The result, Chambers, is an outstanding work within the deep catalog of Aukai recordings. It takes us closer than ever to the sources of Markus Sieber’s multi-hued musical world, revealing untold wonders of sound and spirit. - written by Alan DiPerna