Between the Two is a four-channel piece composed by Aho Ssan in 2023 for Sylwester Galuszka’s Black Room series. Created specifically for this immersive and intimate listening space, the work explores the state of active listening — that elusive space between awareness and surrender. It is a piece about thresholds: between wakefulness and sleep, intention and intuition, presence and drift. Built from slowly shifting textures, deep harmonic structures, and restrained dynamics, Between the Two invites the listener to enter a temporal blur — a moment where attention is gently held and then released. Time stretches and contracts, and the boundaries between sound and perception dissolve. The piece resonates with the poetics of Gaston Bachelard, evoking a space of reverie where sound becomes a vessel for introspection. It is not a narrative or a statement, but rather an invitation to inhabit time differently — to dwell in stillness, and to experience listening as a form of slow presence. Between the Two becomes a quiet ritual of attunement, where nothing is explained, yet everything is felt.
Between the TwoAho Ssan (FR)
four-channel piece, 2023
Aho Ssan (FR)
Aho Ssan is the artist name of Paris-based Niamké Désiré. After studying graphic design and cinema, he began composing electronic music and creating his own digital instruments. Shortly after, he won the Foundation France Television Prize for his soundtrack to Ingha Mago’s film in 2015 and has worked on several projects related to IRCAM and GRM in France. His debut LP Simulacrum was released on February 7, 2020, via Subtext Recordings. Based on the concept of Jean Baudrillard, it navigates society’s presentation of inclusivity and equality against his own experience of growing up Black in France. Aho Ssan debuted Simulacrum at Berlin Atonal 2019.
Subsequently, his work has been presented in various institutions across Europe and the United States, including Lincoln Center (New York, US), La Maison de la Radio (Paris, FR), CTM (Berlin, DE), MACBA (Barcelona, ES), Muziekgebouw (Amsterdam, NL) and Krakow Philharmonic (Krakow, PL). In 2022 he released a collaborative album Limen with the artist KMRU and is also part of the SHAPE+ artist platform, organized annually by a network of 16 festivals and arts centers — among them the CTM festival in Berlin and the Unsound festival in Krakow.
His music has been praised by various media outlets such as NPR, Pitchfork, Resident Advisor, Liberation and Les Inrockuptibles. Aho Ssan has just released his new solo album Rhizomes on Nicolas Jaar’s Other People label.
