Category: ARTICLE

JEM FINERS LONGPLAYER INVITES THE LISTENER INTO A PASSAGE IN TIME. CONSTRUCTED OF 234 TIBETAN SINGING BOWLS, ARRANGED IN 6 CONCENTRIC RINGS, LONGPLAYER IS A CONVERSATION OF RESONANCE, A MESSAGE OF TRANQUILITY FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS AND A QUESTION ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FUTURE WHILE REFLECTING THE PAST. THE PRIMAUDIAL SINGING OF LONGPLAYER ACTS AS A CATALYST OF REMEMBERING OUR PAST, THE IMPORTANCE OF ARCHAIC VALUES AND THE ECHO OF TIME WE HEAR THROUGH MUSIC AND SOUND. THIS TRANSPORTIVE PIECE OF MUSIC IN WHICH ITS CREATOR JEM FINER, CREATED TO LAST ONE THOUSANDS YEARS, IT’S HOME ON THE DIGITAL ETHER ALLOWS FOR THIS PIECE OF MUSIC TO BE HEARD BY ANYONE AND EVERYONE AT ANY GIVEN TIME.

CURRENTLY HOUSED IN CANNING TOWN, MY FIRST EXPERIENCE OF LONGPLAYER WAS OF SOLITUDE. AS A LIFE LONG FAN OF DRONE AND AMBIENT, LONGPLAYER STARTING TO WORK AS A CANVAS FOR IDEAS, IT ALLOWS SPACE FOR DEEP MEDATIVE THINKING, DISASSOCIATION AND INTROSPECTION. ITS ARRANGEMENT IS CYCLICAL, MIRRORING THE NATURE OF LIFE, AN AUDIBLE OUROBOROS EXPERIENCE OF GENTLE REMINDERS OF THE FRAGILITY OF LIFE YET THE SEEMINGLY INFINITE AND PERMANENT STATE OF THE UNIVERSE, EVER GROWING EVER CHANGING, EVER PERMEATING.

NOW PASSED DOWN THROUGH A LINEAGE OF RESPONSIBILITY THE DAUGHTERS OF JEM FINER ACTS AS ITS AMBASSADORS CARETAKERS. EVEN THOUGH LONGFORM EXISTS PREDOMINANTLY ON THE DIGITAL PLAIN, ITS MESSAGE STILL NEEDS TO BE PRESERVED AND SHARED WITH FUTURE GENERATIONS OF THOSE WILLING TO TUNE INTO ITS NETWORK OF PEACEGIVING REMEMBRANCE. THE IDEA OF CREATING SOMETHING THAT OUTLIVES YOU AND PRESERVES A MESSAGE FOR FUTURE BEINGS HAS ALWAYS FASCINATED ME. IT REMINDED ME OF THE SPIKE FIELD, A CONCEPT CREATED BY SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES AND THE HUMAN INTERFERENCE TASK FORCE OF THE U.S GOVERNMENT. THE IDEA WAS TO CONCEPTUALISE DETERRENTS FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS FROM DIGGING UP DEEP BURIED NUCLEAR WASTE THAT WOULD POISON THE PLANET, A MESSAGE FROM THE PAST TO PRESERVE THE FUTURE. MONOLITHS OF EVERY RECORDED LANGUAGE AND GIANT SPIKES OF CONCRETE ERECTED FROM THE EARTH WERE CONCEPTUALISED TO WARN THOSE OF THE FUTURE. LONGPLAYER HAS THESE QUALITIES OF A DEEPER MEANING, SURE IT COULD BE CONSIDERED JUST A ROTATING AND MORPHING PIECE OF MUSIC THAT SOUNDS PLEASANT AND INSPIRES MINDFULNESS BUT ITS ETHOS IS DEEPER WITHIN THE SOUND.

LONGPLAYER IS A REMINDER OF OUR OFTEN LOST AND MISINTERPRETED ANCESTRY, IT TALKS TO THE INNATE PARTS OF US THAT UNDERSTANDS WITHOUT WORDS. IT RELATES TERRENCE MCKENNA’S NOTES ON ‘’’ARCHAIC VALUES’’ MEANING THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNITY, PRESERVING LIFE AND GAIA AND GIVING BACK INTO SOMETHING THAS GIFTED YOU LIFE ITSELF. WE LIVE IN A DIGITAL FLOOD OF MISINFORMATION AND FEEDBACK, AND WITH THE RISE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, THE TRUTH BECOMES A LOT HARDER TO FIND. THERES A PURITY AND TRUTH TO LONGPLAYER THAT WE ARE LACKING DUE TO THE MUDDYING OF THE WATER BY SOCIAL MEDIA, MISINFORMATION AND IMPENDING DOOM OF POTENTIAL WAR.

LONGPLAYER INVITES SOMEONE TO TUNE OUT OF THE MADNESS FOR A MOMENT AND HEAR TRUTH AND CLARITY, TO ASK THE EXISTENTIAL QUESTIONS THAT MATTER, TO HEAR THE INNER CHILD AND TO GREET THE SHADOW. A MOMENT TO HEAR THE PAST AND THE FUTURE SIMULTANEOUSLY.

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LESS IS ALWAYS MORE

Over the last few years within my art practice, I’ve come to the conclusion that less is always more. The idea of endless possibilities within anything has always made me anxious. Through an inspiration completely unrelated to music—a friend of mine, a PhD graduate and published author—I found a parallel. His room contains only what is necessary for his practice: books, a bed, and a laptop. The idea of cutting away circuitry to clear the path ahead resonates deeply with me.

This reductionist approach has helped me hone in on concepts amidst the mess of everyday ideas. When it comes to patching and programming any form of musical gear, it can be a drowning experience—endless wires, endless possibilities, and endless questions: Which goes where? Will it fit on the table at the show?

Watching Dominick Fernow (Vatican Shadow) deliver a highlight performance in New York reaffirmed to me that less is more. With a simplified arrangement—a CDJ mixer, one launch pad, and a microphone—Fernow executed a one-hour set of brutal electronics spanning fifteen years. No fancy tactics, no tricks, no complex displays of mixing technique—just an honest delivery of cold, rhythmic industrial technoscapes.

In my own practice, the idea of using only what’s chosen has taken shape in the planning of my next album. It will be created using four pieces of analogue gear: the Sonicware Ambient Liven, the Magnetar Black Distortion Unit, and two echo and reverb pedals by Death By Audio. By allowing only the possibilities within these machines to define the sound of the album, I aim to clear the path ahead—to focus, refine, and push both the limits of the machines and my own creative mind.

“The punk rockers said, ‘Learn three chords and form a band.’ And we thought, ‘Why learn any chords?’ We wanted to make music like Ford made cars on the industrial belt. Industrial music for industrial people.” – GENESIS P ORRIDGE OF THROBBING GRISTLE & PSYCHIC TV

1969, Hull, England — COUM Transmissions, an art collective founded by Genesis P-Orridge (Neil Megson) and Cosey Fanni Tutti, inspired by Dadaist art and the transgressive writings of William Burroughs, They took to the streets with an absurdist and subversive approach, they sought to break the mold of stagnation and challenge the social norms embedded in the stiff upper lip of the British psyche.

Through artistic provocation and a confrontational approach to performance, COUM was built to explore social taboos and ask fundamental questions about the potential artist in all of us — and, in my opinion, to face the shadow, a concept written about extensively by Carl Jung and many other esoteric philosophers.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
— Carl Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 13 (Alchemical Studies)

The infamous Prostitution show, held at London’s ICA, combined collage work and physical artefacts from COUM member Cosey Fanni Tutti’s pornographic ventures through modelling for sex magazines. This put COUM on the radar of both aspiring artists and the powers that be. Their unwillingness to conform laid the groundwork for an imminent artistic revolution — the philosophy of DIY culture, the “do it yourself” ethos upon which industrial music and art would be defined

24 August 1983 — Air Gallery, London, UK. John Balance (Coil), Peter Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Coil), Zos Kia and Marc Almond (Soft Cell) present How to Destroy Angels – A Slow Fade to Total Transparency, a live performance combining tape electronics and ritualistic actions inspired by the Thelemic occult work of Aleister Crowley. The piece incorporated self-immolation imagery and served as both a statement of philosophy and sonic identity.

With atonal elements of percussion, synthesisers and tape loops, this ritual noise work explored the ecstatic and violent nature of man, as well as the transformative qualities of performance and esoteric ritual. Occult inquiry has often been a central theme for many industrial bands such as Psychic TV, creating a kind of satire of the cultism found in both religion and high society. In effect, these performances act as a mirror to ourselves, reflecting the often deplorable nature of mankind.

Many attendees of the performance were appalled and left soon after acts of defecation and bloodletting began. The recording was later remastered and released by the U.S. label Cold Spring, and it is now regarded as a key moment in the history of industrial music and performance art.

DIY – DO IT YOURSELF

The idea of musicianship has often been relative to the idea of skill, the fundamental understanding of chord structure, melody and a technical proficiency to create sound of a palatable nature. An essential fact of industrial music history is none of the artists of the early years had any musical “ability” per se, but a desire to create, an innate calling to push the inside outwards into reality, not creating to please the concert hall but to artistically “do it yourself” by any means necessary. Not to say through years of practice they don’t learn more technical skill, but the action is not from the essence of classical training or conventional understanding. This breathes new life into art and rewires our approach to music and art which will always be of us the people. This Modernist approach to art and music has inspired multiple generations of ” Wreckers of Civilisation ” to further break the stagnation of formulaic approaches to artistic practises, always posing the questions to further challenge our understanding of ourselves and the ultimate journey of self expression.

“We must break out of this limited circle of sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.” Luigi Russolo – The Art of Noises 1913

” I want the releases and even the performances to be rooms much more than narratives, so that the music becomes an invitation to go into that room and do whatever you want in there. It’s architecture, and I would like for it to be a very emotional and loving piece of architecture ” – LOKE RAHBEK OF DAMIAN DUBROVNIK

Arrow 5, from Damian Dubrovnik’s sixth studio album released under the Copenhagen label Posh Isolation, has remained one of the most poignant tracks in my life. The collaboration between Loke Rahbek and Christian Stadsgaard explores poetry, sublime dissonance, fragility, and grief — all delicately balanced between power electronics and contemporary classical/electroacoustic music.

The juxtapositions in Arrow 5 — consisting of minor chord drone melodies, atonal string work, recognizable tropes of melancholia, and the use of reversed sounds to create dissonance — guide the listener through a slow procession of tragedy and beauty. The textural quality evokes both nature and the machine: reeds, chains, metal, and wood are balanced together to form a unique harmony of emotion and sound.

Loke’s vocals progressively become more direct and forceful; through distortion and overdrive, the poetry transforms into immolation. The careful balancing of the familiar and the unfamiliar creates a powerful sense of duality — pain and pleasure, grief and awe, anguish and relief.

Arrow 5 is, ultimately, an expression of duality in sound: a push and pull, heartbreak and romance, glory and disgust.

That morning
Great many arrows
Formed a flight
And
I formed
A cage
With my fingers
To hold you in