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Artist: TOT ONYX
Title: SENNO I
Format: LP / digital
Catalog no: iDEAL203
Edition: 300 black vinyl copies w postcard inlay
Release: NOW

Things that don't exist, that don't seem to exist, or we don't believe exist, might be the only things that actually exist.
Things that i always believed that existed, seem to be an illusion.
And things that i always denied the existence of in the past, seem to be what shape reality and rule the world.
But what is reality? And what is illusion?
Is the reality i am seeing the same as yours?
Perhaps not.

”Senno I” is the solo debut album by Tot Onyx aka Tommi Tokyo, who has been a founding member of the Japanese performance art/live electronics duo group A since 2012. They incorporated the use of the body in their noise & poetry-performances and they made some resonating appearances at festivals like Berlin Atonal. Adept at bending expectations, both live and recorded, the band’s formative early work echoes the experiential vocabulary in which Tommi continues to develop today. A practice in the rejection of tradition and cliché, which in Greil Marcus's words, "Share the principles of negation, rebellion, destruction and détournement”.

Tommi Tokyo has worked in graphic design and photography and has worked for theatre and other forms of stage arts. Tot Onyx is her deeply personal project which shares the founding energies of group A, but is traveling deeper and elsewhere. This is a rich study of her interior life.

Tot Onyx - Voice Calling

An Anti Dub excursion from the Ep "Stranger Than Dub" https://nottebrigante.bandcamp.com/album/nb01t-hlm38-uvb76-the-idealist-lo-kindre-stranger-than-dub-ep

HLM38 - EMPTY QUARTER

https://oopheliaxz.bandcamp.com/track/fuzzi

Fuzzi-

With 𝑽𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑨𝒄𝒕, exael’s offering to the ENXPL series, the artist furthers their exploration of what they refer to as “the jester’s gaze”, wherein a variable array of emotions of the fool are less than obvious to decode. In this emotively charged interzonal reflection point, exael probes these psychedelic anxieties through eight varying tracks of accomplished electronic music production. Excavating the root role of the jester and it’s cosmic objecthood, exael takes on a synchronous identity; human and computer, jester and virus, superimposed. Far from a glistening ambient escapism, or sentimental shoegaze meditations, or obligatory club tropes, exael has created a sonic terrain unique to their own narrative and positionality as an artist. Side A of 𝑽𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑨𝒄𝒕 showcases exael’s comfort in fast tempo constructions, while the B side offers slower tempoed ventures with guest vocal duties by writer Zoe Darsee moving between trip-hop and industrial affectations.

exael is an alias of Naemi, an artist residing in Berlin. Their work under this moniker aims to upend elements of divergent sonic aesthetics and musical styles, reassembling them with the intent to create diffuse, mulitfunctional contexts. Utilizing exael as an avatar, Naemi attempts to access a collective subconscious via their own, externally processing the sounds and images that permeate contemporary life. Thus, highlighting the ways in which people merge and re-combine with culture on a molecular level as a result of this near-constant immersion. They present stimulating, lysergic sounds in an organic and explorative manner instead of the sometimes exhausting vibe of highly-calculated, experimental club music. 
credits
releases August 27, 2023

All production exael
Audio finalized by Glyn Maier
Design by RJM Vanderheyden

VANISHING ACT

PURCHA$E

ENXPL18 - EXAEL - B1 Desire Is A Glitch (with Zoe Darsee)

With 𝑽𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑨𝒄𝒕, exael’s offering to the ENXPL series, the artist furthers their exploration of what they refer to as “the jester’s gaze”, wherein a variable array of emotions of the fool are less than obvious to decode. In this emotively charged interzonal reflection point, exael probes these psychedelic anxieties through eight varying tracks of accomplished electronic music production. Excavating the root role of the jester and it’s cosmic objecthood, exael takes on a synchronous identity; human and computer, jester and virus, superimposed. Far from a glistening ambient escapism, or sentimental shoegaze meditations, or obligatory club tropes, exael has created a sonic terrain unique to their own narrative and positionality as an artist. Side A of 𝑽𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑨𝒄𝒕 showcases exael’s comfort in fast tempo constructions, while the B side offers slower tempoed ventures with guest vocal duties by writer Zoe Darsee moving between trip-hop and industrial affectations.

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exael is an alias of Naemi, an artist residing in Berlin. Their work under this moniker aims to upend elements of divergent sonic aesthetics and musical styles, reassembling them with the intent to create diffuse, mulitfunctional contexts. Utilizing exael as an avatar, Naemi attempts to access a collective subconscious via their own, externally processing the sounds and images that permeate contemporary life. Thus, highlighting the ways in which people merge and re-combine with culture on a molecular level as a result of this near-constant immersion. They present stimulating, lysergic sounds in an organic and explorative manner instead of the sometimes exhausting vibe of highly-calculated, experimental club music.

Audio finalized by Glyn Maier
Design by RJM Vanderheyden 

@exael

Vanishing Act

exael - Acid Hiccup (ENXPL18)

Track from "System 1" EP
https://d-towards.bandcamp.com/album/system-1

Limited edition 7" of 5 copies
Mastered by Alexandr Pustynsky (@ajokki)
Artwork by Cpuover (@cpuover)
Cut by Disc Archive

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draft_sph
hydra unt
key C
sub vision

sub vision (from "System 1" EP)

december

Green Bow

Disquiet Junto 0712 invited us to interpret a barcode as a rhythm.

The first barcode patent was issued in 1952, but they didn't look like the ones we usually see now: they were bullseye-shaped. Today's linear barcodes use what is called "many-width symbology", meaning that the vertical lines ("modules") in the barcode are different widths, from 1 to 4. The lines are printed vertically instead of horizontally so that if the ink smeared during printing, the code would still be legible and no information would be lost. 

Barcodes almost failed in the retail space, because no one wanted to be the first to invest the money to adopt them when they were unproven. They were a lot  more popular more quickly in the railroad business, where by the early 1960s optical scanners could read the color-coded barcodes on train cars as they rolled past at full speed.

The barcode I chose as source material for the prompt was from a tape dispenser that I bought to help my daughter pack to leave home. This piece is probably an aural photograph of the feelings I'm having right now, but that's neither here nor there. Where was I?

Instead of reading the barcode as if it were visually measuring out beats, I decided to decode the modules and transcribe the widths. This turned into the sequence 2 1 3 2 1 4 4 1 / 2 1 2 3 1 1 1 3 / 3 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 / 1 1, which I incorporated into this piece in several ways.

First, the percussion pattern is built by breaking the sequence into chunks of four numbers. These four numbers indicate the beat position of a series of drum kit components on a 16-step grid. So 2-1-3-2, the first sequence, means the kick drum hits on the 2nd, 1st, 3rd, and 2nd beats of the four divisions of the pattern. Next would be the snare, then the tom, and finally the hihat with 1-1-1-3. The sequence also determines the note length and note number of the "melodic" sequence. 

Finally, I translated the sequence into steps in a custom arpeggiator, with the width of the modules transposed into the vertical axis of the beats in the pattern. There are two arpeggiated synth tracks, running at different rates, played on the Logic ES2 and Alchemy software synths. A triggered vocal sample rhythmically reflects the numeric sequence. The rest of the synth parts came from the Roland boutique Studio Electronics SE-02, a reissue of the "Moog-adjacent" SE-01 analog monosynth of 1982.

There's a lot going on in this piece, but there's a lot going on over here, too. The sound that a single mom makes in her empty nest. Snapshot of a moment in time at 90bpm.

More on the 712th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Zebra Code — The Assignment: What rhythm do you hear in a bar code? — at https://disquiet.com/0712/.