Sex Magick Wizards - Qliphoth Chokehold

So far (2022)

Music, instruments, recording, mixing, and album cover - Dmitri Koteshov

So far

Modular Sketchbook 1-22-22

We’ve reached book IV in Rupert Clervaux’s series of “Zibaldone” audio diaries, at which point we find him telling a different kind of story. 

“The first three all had very specific themes, while this one feels a little bit looser and doesn’t have just one thematic thrust,” he tells me, which maybe explains why listening feels a bit like annotating. I’m underlining, emphasizing, drawing arrows from here to there, highlighting symbols and noting motifs, realising, questioning, eureka-ing. An impressionistic meaning’s been encoded in and we’re lucky to be given the space to play that most poetic and boundless of all mental games: narrativization. 

There are no wrong answers, but Rupert offers some clues either way. If there’s any cipher here it’s “something like a meditation on the concept of ‘depth’––in all its connotative forms.” Think below the surface, (the) underground, yawning oceans, being ‘down in the dirt’, soil, roots, rootlessness, pulling at the dregs, collapse, profundity, stable and unstable horizons, distance, perspective, intuition, not to mention relative opposites: to be shallow, to be above, to be beyond. 

It’s got me thinking of Bresson’s “Bring things together that have as yet never been brought together and did not seem predisposed to be so.” His: “Dig deep where you are. Don't slip off elsewhere.” Rupert has realized these—two favourite goals of mine!—here. 

This is music that catches you at your own periphery, gives pause, has you offering a little “huh” to, asking “I wonder why” to. Again, it’s got me musing on another mindworm, this time from New York publisher and multi-sensory reading room Dispersed Holdings: “Feeling-making-knowing feedback loop; cartography of feeling; water as text, read to know the land beneath and around it, and body as reader.” 

Is it ok to offer up these other contexts out of context? I think so, because Zibaldone IV articulates a similarly swirly tone. Like, we’ve got Rebecca Solnit talking through Kropotkin’s “Mutual Aid” and later calling out to Michael Ruppert a ways away, and “Easy Rider” is playing in the wings. We’ve got Susan Sontag magically contextualizing Mariah Carey with poet Thylias Moss triangulating in order to sketch out (Rupert again) “something a little more interesting than wilful eclecticism or that laboured and patronising kind of pop-savvy.” 

Are we following? Whether yes or no Vanessa Bedoret follows on with a performance of a performance of Moss’s 'Water Road’: to be once or twice removed, via strange transitions, purposeful confusions, and, suddenly, seagulls. We’re on a boat with Ingeborg Bachmann—and how I wish I could actually be! But maybe thanks to this music I can as literature, films, friends, lethargy, coincidences, little mental links, eternal wormholes, lingering notions come together to imagine something better. 

Text by Natalia Panzer 
npanzer.com 

Artwork by Coline Cornélis 

Music by Rupert Clervaux 

with 
Vanessa Bedoret: voice and violin on Thylias Moss #2 
Eben Bull: trumpet and electronics on Mutual Aid and Departure from England 
Isis O’Regan; voice on Departure from England 
Nick Taylor: electronics on Chthonic ’97 
Ben Vince: saxophone and electronics on Chatsworth ’17 

Artwork by Coline Cornélis 

Warm thanks to James Marrs, as always, and Natalia Panzer 

Vanessa recreates and reads an excerpt from ‘Water Road’ by Thylias Moss. Isis reads ‘Departure from England’ by Ingeborg Bachmann (translated by Peter Filkins). This record is dedicated to both poets––with great respect and deep admiration.

04. Does Pop Culture Interest You?

•Ω°∫][[[ıı|(o]||ßo•º’‘'´‘‹√

I LIKE TO SLEEP - Bedrock

Akuphone. AKU1031 (CD/Digital)
Official release date : 08/07/2022
Buy here : https://bit.ly/3wMReuR

Kadef Abgi came together in a serendipitous way. Devin Brahja Waldman was walking up St. Laurent borough in Montreal when he heard an otherworldly voice emanating from the venue Divan Orange. He walked in and listened to the singer on stage. When he was done, Devin walked over to him. After a short exchange about playing a house show in a couple of days, Ziad Qoulaii told Devin that he was available for all his projects. Shortly thereafter, Devin and Ziad met up at Mathieu Pelletier-Gagnon’s studio with Anas Jellouf and Hamza Lahmadi. Later on, Anas Hejam, Vicky Mettler and guitarist Sam Shalabi (Shalabi Effect, The Dwarfs Of East Agouza, Karkhana, Land Of Kush…) joined.

The music materialized in a natural, collectively improvised way, without any compositions or ideas discussed beforehand - and without second takes. From there, Waldman began editing and mixing. Ala Dehghan painted the album’s great artwork.

A single composer’s imagination would not have produced Diva Of Deva Loka as it is music created from a collective consciousness unfolding in real time. The album has its roots in each musician’s  sonic experience: this includes Arabic music —including most notably Moroccan Gnawa— as well as rock ‘n‘ roll, jazz and the avant-garde. 

Devin Brahja Waldman is a New York saxophonist, drummer, synthesizer player and composer. He has performed with Patti Smith, Thurston Moore, Lydia Lunch along many other artists. He has also accompanied his aunt, the poet Anne Waldman, since the age of ten. He leads a NYC/Montreal-based band, B R A H J A, performs in Heroes Are Gang Leaders and is a member of Artists For A Free World Marching Band. Along with Anne Waldman and his cousin Ambrose Bye, Waldman co-directs Fast Speaking Music—a still-active music and poetry label which has released the works of Amiri Baraka, Meredith Monk, CA Conrad, and many others.

Kadef Abgi

Buy CD / Digital

Kadef Abgi - Sarab (AKU1031)

At the Opposite Pole of Architectural Virtue

Evighet

Gwenifer Raymond tops off her astounding debut year with an Americana UK 'Best Instrumentalist' Nomination, a 'Best of 2018' nod from MOJO, and a rousing endorsement from ... Iggy Pop !

Her new seasonal single, The Three Deaths of Red Spectre, is out via every digital service, worldwide.

This song was originally born of this live scoring piece I did for a early 20th century silent film called ‘Red Spectre’, so it wasn’t from the outset designed as a Christmas song, but it does feel like a winter song to me. The opening is cold and spiky; it puts me in mind of dark nights and city light reflections on wet tarmac. Then it has these sort of changing seasons in the song, like windy rain and calm sweeping over in sequence. Then back to the start; with the lights all over again.

This time of year is my favourite, when it gets dark early and bitter cold outside; you need to have a hostile environment in the first place to have something to wrap up snug and cosy against. That’s kind of the whole point of a winter festival right? It’s essence is in the contrast.

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Praise for Gwenifer Raymond's debut LP 'You Never Were Much of a Dancer'...

"A profound talent" - Guardian (5 stars)
"Stunningly confident...in full possession of its art" - UNCUT (8/10)
"An immersive debut" - Observer (4 stars)

CD/LP & vinyl 7" available at tompkinssquare.com

The Three Deaths Of Red Spectre by Gwenifer Raymond

TompkinsSquare

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