Kuma

How do you answer a simple question like, to paraphrase the title of John Cale’s autobiography: “What’s Canadian for Zen?”

Bristol-born and Vancouver-based, Kuma has been attempting to do so for over twenty-five years. Destroying old worlds and building new ones, he’s left his fingerprint on the international electronic music scene as a producer, DJ, promoter, label owner, and radio presenter.

A noted advocate for the transcendence of self, situation, and time through sonic means, the Canadian producer has spent his musical career opening doorways and stepping through using beatless music as the key.  Internationally recognized efforts for Thomas Ragsdale’s Frosti and Soundtracking the Void imprints, Waxing Crescent Records, See Blue Audio, and Fallen Moon Recordings have been noted as part of a modern resurgence in ambient music

As a curator, Kuma’s influence can be seen everywhere. A champion of terrestrial radio, he’s a former host and producer of the show Just Concerts on Canada’s national broadcaster, the CBC. For almost twenty years he’s been found on Vancouver radio station CFRO. Kuma can be found on-air every Thursday night at midnight, showing off Vancouver’s electronic music community to the world,via the institution that is his radio show, Art Of Beatz.