Iz’s classic album Kөlêngkê (meaning “shadow” in Kazakh). Arguably the most well-known work of Mamer’s group projects, the album was recorded in 2010 when Iz was in the middle of transformation from a Kazakh folk group to an avant-garde music project under various contemporary influences including industrial, progressive, and psychedelic rock.

The album took almost a year to record during which Mamer decided to start all over several times. In Kөlêngkê, the band mixes the acoustic sounds of traditional Kazakh instruments, such as dombra and kobyz, with distorted electronic effects and harsh metallic percussion. Drummer Zhang Dong assembled his own kit, replacing snares and cymbals with barbed wires, a giant caged iron fan, and various metal scraps collected from factories. The result is a bricolage of dark, rusty, and confrontational industrial sounds underlying the traditional Kazakh surface, a forceful and sincere anti-world-music type of “world music”.

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Mamer / vocal, dombra, bass, guitar, kobyz, jew’s harp

Nurtay / bass, vocals

Zhang Dong / drums, percussion

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Recorded in 2010, Originally Released in 2011, Reissued on Cassette in 2015