Dead Loop by Flora Yin Wong

Flora Yin Wong’s latest release, Dead Loop, is a meditation on risk, memory, and the haunting legacy of forbidden movement(s). The titles of the two tracks—1972 and 1977—refer to when the infamous gymnastic bars move, the ‘Korbut Flip’, was performed for the first (and last) time. Deemed so perilous the flip had to be banned from international competition following its first execution at the 1972 Munich Olympics by 17-year-old Soviet gold medallist, Olga Korbut. In 1977, another Soviet gymnast, Elena Mukhina, modified the risky flip with an additional twist… cementing the move’s mythological status with an additional re-iteration.

Over two brief sides of tape, Flora Yin Wong narrates the myth of the forbidden Korbut Flip with elongated, processed, and looped layers of the kemençe (an Eastern Mediterranean stringed instrument found in Turkey, Greece, and Iran). The strings of the kemençe are bowed, plucked and struck, echoing the gymnast’s own uncanny motions, cycles, and steps on and around the bars. Flora Yin Wong manipulates the sounds through various pedals and GRM Tools to craft an unpredictable diptych of haunted soundscapes. Recorded in London, this music is immersive and tense, brimming with a sense of suspended risk, much like the gymnast tumbling around the bars.

Flora Yin Wong is an experimental artist, writer, and producer from London known for her multidisciplinary approach and evocative soundscapes. Dead Loop continues Wong’s work channeling historical narrative and personal resonance into sound.

Modern Love / PAN