|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LP
|
|
HG 1904LP
|
Following the success of her 2018 solo debut album Kontrapoetik (PRTLS 017LP), the Swedish composer Maria W Horn returns with Epistasis, her most ambitious record to date. The title track, "Konvektion" and the two parts of "Interlocked Cycles" see the XKatedral co-founder explore radical approaches to composition that combine avant-garde methods with electronic means. While Kontrapoetik highlighted Horn's strength as a conceptual and political artist, Epistasis is to be understood as an advanced statement by a forward-thinking composer who throughout four pieces channels her influences, ranging from black metal to minimal music, through state-of-the-art technology. Originally composed as an audiovisual piece for synchronized multi-channel sound and lights and premiered in 2018 at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, "Interlocked Cycles" is a series of pieces exploring a gradual increase in tempo and density using various instruments. It was written to be performed by a computer-controlled upright Disklavier piano while the electronic part was generated within the Supercollider framework using phase modulation synthesis. An exercise in minimalism that combines the subtle gravity of Phill Niblock's work with the visceral theatrics of Anna von Hausswolff's organ pieces. 180 gram vinyl.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
PRTLS 017LP
|
Kontrapoetik is a personal and simultaneously historical investigation, tackling the turmoil-ridden past of composer Maria Horn's home region Ångermanland in northern Sweden, and her own counter-exorcism project thereof. Drawing from archival material, she taps into the conflict of the worker's movement's clash with the Swedish military in the 1930's that nearly triggered a revolution. Before that Ångermanland was the site of an execution of women accused of witchcraft in 1674. Norrland is sometimes referred to as "the colonies" because of the uneven distribution of the wealth generated by its natural resources, little of which is reinvested in the area. Since the 1970's, it has seen depopulation and disintegration of the welfare state. "Ångermanländska Bilder" is based on material from a collection of films that depict the environment of Ångermanland from 1930-1940: the manor houses of the rural community, steamboats transporting timber along the river, power plants, and sawmills. Concurrent with Horn's Ångermanland research, she was part of an artistic research project in the form of a satanic feminist sect. The goal of the sect was to develop a practice of ceremonies and rituals from counter-readings of the Christian genesis narratives, dismantling its misogynist traditions. In these, Lucifer is re-conceptualized as a feminist liberator, and seen as an ally in the struggle against a patriarchy supported by God and the priesthood. Several of the pieces on Kontrapoetik were composed specifically for ceremonial practices, such as "Ave", a composition built from a text by sect member Michelle Jangmyr. Field recordings sourced from the archives of The Härnösand Art Museum thread through magnetic tape, formatting stark portraits of Horn's attested narrative. Harmonically, inspiration is drawn from ancient Swedish pastoral music, minor scales and free contrapuntal progressions. Recordings from Swedish radio were uncovered from the archive and sampled and reinterpreted. The fusion of these sources with mellotron, church organ and Buchla 200 synthesizer creates an immersive music that welcomes other forms of listening, unhinged from the cerebral and guided by intuition. The territories explored by Horn on Kontrapoetik are vast, but at the heart of each piece is a strong fundament of reductionist technique; deceptively simple harmonic progressions are re-fractured through the means of inversion and repetition. Coupled with this is an almost tactile relationship to texture as well as an immaculate sense of the physicality of sound. This work, while saturated by longing and loss, never gives in, but stands steadfastly defiant.
|