Mikhail Karikis’s composition ‘Once More in CoF Minor’ features on the music album Army of Me conceived by the influential musician Björk Guðmundsdóttir. The Icelandic pop icon launched a world-wide music competition to create an album which features young talent and to raise funds for the victims of the 2004 tsunami disaster in Indonesia.
Mikhail’s contribution appears alongside 19 other tracks by emerging artists from all over the world, ranging from death metal to experimental classical music. Mikhail said: “Once More is an experimental song for which I rearranged an electro-acoustic piece I created in 2004 for my doctoral thesis at Slade School of Fine Art (UCL) and recorded new vocals. The piece is composed for electronics, two violins, harpsichord and voice in a baroque juxtaposition of extreme dynamics, pitch and tempo. It is part of a series of works in which voice is used as ‘sound-sculpture’ incorporating whispers, yells and groans.”
The original version of Karikis’s composition appears as Untitled in Cof Minor on his solo debut album Orphica released in 2007 on the Belgian Sub Rosa/Quatermass label, distributed internationally. In the months after its release by Björk’s UK music label One Little Indian and in collaboration with UNICEF, the album Army of Me raised approximately a quarter of a million to support children affected by the tsunami.