the formless track

is a six-year collaboration between zen master hyon gak sunim and UK artist arman ray.

Built around direct zen teaching, the project has developed across three albums of electronic music, film and visual work.

The aim has been to find new forms capable of carrying a living teaching into the world as it is now.

Into the Noise

Most life does not happen in silence.

It happens in traffic, in kitchens, on trains, at work, online, in conversation, in distraction — in the noise of ordinary life.

The Formless Track asks whether direct Zen teaching can live there too.

By taking the teaching into the noise, the intention is not to make Zen more fashionable or to use it as an atmosphere. Each track is built around a complete teaching, carried through rhythm, repetition, voice and electronic music.

A teaching can enter through the music, lodge somewhere in memory, and return later — perhaps hours, days or weeks afterwards — when something in ordinary life suddenly gives it meaning, opens the possibility of insight, or creates a desire to begin or deepen a practice.

The aim is not to create a particular mood.

It is to give the teaching another way to travel.