МЛН

August 2023
@shampooty 100 gecs 101 Things To Do With Your Modem 1080p 1969 1990s 20 is the new 40 2000s fashion 2012 2013 2013: Appropriating a 2013 2014 3D Animation 3D Cool World 5.4 A Guide to Buying Haunted Items A. G. Cook A.I. aaron carnes Abelton Abner Jay abstract art abstractionists absurdism acoustic action action figures Ad Hoc Adam Harper Adult Swim Adventure Time advertisements advertising aesthetic aesthetics Afterschool Specials AI art Alain Delorme Alan Vega album art alcohol Alejandro Jodorowsky Alexandra Rowland Alissa Timoshinka Alt Space altered states alvin & the chipmunks ambient American Apparel analyses analysis Andre Ulrych Angelina Jolie Angus MacLise Animal Collective animation Ann Steel Anthony Bourdain Anti-art anti-consumerism anti-fashion anti-virus software anti-war anxiety Apophenia Appropration Aquarium Drunkard aquariums architecture Architecture in Helsinki Architecture of Utopia archive ariel rechtshaid Army of Trolls art Art Bears art installation art museum articles artificial intelligence artist artists ASMR Astral Weeks Austin Psych Fest 2013 auteur authenticity Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response avant garde Avey Tare and Panda Bear b-movies Babette's Feast Baby Blue Baby Cartoon Rhymes bad operation Barf-O-Rama Baroqueikebana Barstool Sports baseball cards BASEKetball bass guitar bath salts Battle vs Death Battle bbrainz beautimus Begotten believers Ben Butcher Bernard Dumaine Berndnaut Smilde Bertolt Brecht Betamax Plus Bill Doss Bill Murray Billy Childish bio-dynamic biodegradable urn biography biosonic MIDI technology Black Dice Black Flag Blackest Rainbow Records Blackout Blade Runner Blockbuster blog Blow Job: An Extreme Wind Photoseries Bob Marley Bob Ross Bongwater Boo Boo books bootleg toys Bradford Cox brain tingles brains Brand New Wayo Brian Brian Eno Britt Brown Brittany Murphy Broadened Horizons: The Ultimate Shit List Bruce Goff Bruce Nauman Brushy Brushy Brutalist Architecture Bubblegum Bass Bubbly Bulbasaur Building the Bridge Burger bus stops butterfly Cadillacs and Dinosaurs Can cannabis career motivated Carl Sagan Cartoon Network Casino Night catbite Censorship chandelier Charles Grodin Charles Thomson Charlie Brown Cheddar Goblin children children's books Chillwave chopped & screwed chris cutler Chris Jordan Chris Maggio Chris Marker Christopher Columbus Christopher Reimer Christopher S. Hyatt Christopher White Chrysta Bell Church of the SubGenius cinema click and point games clothes Clothes of the year 2050 Clouds Coci Cocteau Twins Cody Meirick collaboration collage Collateral Damage collections collectors items comedy albums comedy films comedy music comic books communication Comus condition consciousness consumerism content drift conversations cooking cookwear copyright cosmic jazz costumes cottagecore cover band Cradle of Filth Crass creepy criticism Crock Pots crown shyness cult films cult movies cultural movements culture Culture Jamming Cyber Secrets #3 Dada Daevid Allen Dallas Observer Damien Hirst Damo Suzuki Dan Lam Daniel London Daniel Lopatin Danni Filth Danzig dark database Dave Allen David Bowie David Henry David Lowery David Lynch David Toro David Zucker Dean Ween Dean Zeus Colman December Decimus 4 decline Definition of Hunk Dennis Flemion dental calendar design Destroy All Monsters Detachment and the Spiritual Life Diane Cluck dick jokes digital art Digital DIY Labels digital trends Dimensions of Dialogue Dimitri Tsykalov Diplo director directory DIS Magazine disco Discogs Discordianism discussions distaste DIY DJ Dog Dick DJ Evangelion Fan Theory DJ Warlord documentaries dolphins Donka Doka Dope Diglett Dopesmoker Doug Ferguson Douglas Hill Dr. John drawing Drinkfy drone drone music drugs Duane Pitre dub Dudeism Duppy Gun Dustin Wong Dux Content DVD dysmorphia dystopia Earth Eartheater eBay echo chamber edible fixtures eichlers electronic music electronica Eleh elevators Éliane Radigue Elias Mehringe Elizabeth Hart ELO Emily White emo fashion Energy Entourage Ephermeral Work Eric Copeland Eric Lumbleau esoterica essays etienne conod Eurock Evan Prosofsky events Excepter exercises exhibition experimental experimental cuisine experimental music eyesight fake movies fake toys fake tv shows Family Fan Fiction Fandom Music fashion fast food FDA feature films Felicita fiction film film reviews films fire place glass Fire-Toolz Fishing Floating Flying Spaghetti Monster Foetus FoFoFadi food food porn Ford Four American Composers: Robert Ashley France Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons fraud Fred Camper Freddy Got Fingered free Free Blockbuster free jazz Fun Boy Three furniture future pop gadgets gallery Gang of Four Gen Z Generation Y Generation Yawn Genesis P-Orridge genre George Harrison George Plimpton Germany GFOTY Ghost Capital Ghost Modernism Ghostcapital III ghosts Ginny Arnell Giorgio Moroder Glenn Branca Global Village Coffeehouse golden retrievers Gong Goosebumps (TV series) Gorilla vs Bear Goth graphic design grooming Groundhog Day Gruff Rhys Guest Mix Guest Mixes guide guides Guillermo del Toro guitar tunings gummy bears Guo Yi-Hun Guru Guru Gustav Holst GVC hacker culture Hackers hacking Haircut Halloween halloween mix hallucinatory hallucinogens therapy handcrafted objects Hannah Diamond Happiness Harmony Korine harry sword Harvey Milk Hausu Mountain healing HEALTH health & fitness Health Goth hearing loss Hella Hellraiser Hem Sandwich Henry and Glenn Forever Henry Cow Henry Darger Henry Rollins Hippos in Tanks hipster culture hipsters Holger Czukay Holly Herndon holograms Holotropic Breathwork holy fuck Holy Warbles Home Alone homes Homestuck hope hopepunk horror horror movies household objects How to Have a Zen Attitude How to Keep Healthy httpster humaity humanities humor Hung I-chen Hunk Hunk uniform (loosely) hyper connectivity hyperreal Hyperreality I Have No Idea What I'm Doing Iasos ice cream identity Idrissa Diop and Cheikh Tidane Tall Igor Wakhevitch Illuminated Paths Ima Read imagination Important Records independent movies indie fashion indie rock indie sleaze industry news Infectious Disease Balls ink inspiration inspirato Instagram installations interior design internet Internet Archive internet art interview interviews intoxicants inverviews IRL Glasses irony it is most definitely art Ivan Cash Iván Diaz Math J Henry Fair Jabberwocky Jack Black Jack Long James Blackshaw James Bridle James Ferraro James Wines Jan Svankmajer Japanese Bug Fights Japanoise Jared Davis Jeff Bridges jeff rosenstock jer Jessica Chen Jessica Ekomane Jif Peanut Butter Jimmy Buffett John Brien John Carpenter John Fell Ryan John Hamblin John Lurie John Lytle Wilson John Maus John McAfee John Olson Johnny Lee Miller Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease Julian Cope Julian Koster Julien Pacaud junk food Junk Food Dinner Kane West Kazumasa Nagai Keippah Kelly Reichardt Kevin Ayers Kevin Champeny Khelifi Ahmed Kickstarter Kids Incorporated Kids Toys Adult Issues kill lincoln Kim Laughton King Frog KinoVino Kiyohiko Senba and The Haniwa All-Stars Kleenex Knitting clock Krautrock Krautrocksampler Kria Brekkan L.A. La Croix LA Vampires Land art Lauren Boyle law of attraction layout Les Claypool Lester Bangs Life Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone Life During Wartime lifestyle lilangelboi Lindsay Cooper liner notes linguistics link rot Lipgloss Twins lists literature Little Dolls live reviews live streaming lockdown Lol Coxhill London Longest Recorded Echo Lou Reed Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars Love (sculpture) LSA LSD Luca Yupanqui Lucie Thomas Lucky Me Luke Wilson Lumen Lydia Lunch M. Geddes Gengras M. Sage Macauly Culkin Macintosh Plus magazines Magic and Superstition magic mushrooms maintenance art Majestic Casual Malcolm McLaren Malcolm Rebennack Male Chef Mandy Manicure Records manifesto Manifesto For Maintenance Art mannequins manz Marco Roso marijuana marine life Mark Prindle Mark Schultz Martin Short Mary Steenburgen masterpieces Matt Furie Matthew Lutz-Kinoy Matthew McConaughey Max Headroom Max Payne 3 Mayan Apocalypse McDonald's MDMA Mean Clown Welcome Meat Clothing media media culture Meditation memes Men Without Hats Meow Wolf merchandise Metal Machine Music Mica Hendrix Michael Nesmith MIDI Midjourney Mike Hughes Mike Kelly mike park mike sosinski Mike Stoklasa Mindfuck mindfulness Minecraft Miracle Legion miscellaneous Mist Mister Mellow Mix Mixes mixtapes modern music analysis modernism Molecular Gastronomy molly Monkees monkeys monoskop Moon Glyph Moth Cock movements Movie Promotional Merch Unlimited movies movments Mr. Impossible Mr. T Mr. Tinglemittens Mrs Doubtfire Mukqs murder music music charts music community music downloads music journalisim music journalism music marketplace music software music videos music websites Music with Roots in the Aether: Robert Ashley mustard plug Mutant Sounds My Bloody Valentine My Little Pony My Mother's Brisket & Other Love Songs my sharona Myles Byrne-Dunhill NASA natural Natural Materials & Structures: Trend Analysis nature Nautipuss negative influencer neon lights NEST HQ’S GUIDE TO NIGHTCORE Nestflix new age music New Mexico New York New York Times news Nickelodeon Nicklas Hultman Nicolas Cage Nicolás Romero Escalada Nicole McLaughlin Nightcore Nightcorey Nimbus Njena Reddd Foxxx No Use for a Name No Wave No-Neck Blues Band noise NOP Nora Ephron Normcore nostalgia Not Not Fun Not The New York Times NOWNESS NPR Nu Twee nudity Nurse With Wound Nurse With Wound List NY NYC HELL 3:00 OBEY obituaries Obvious Plant ocean oddball music Oingo Boingo Old Joy Oliver Rowe Olivia Newton John Oneohtrix Point Never Online Underground Op Art optical illusion optimism Organ Armani Ornette Coleman Otto Muehl outsider art P.T. Anderson Pacific Rim packaging paint paint flowers painting Painting With John paintings pandemic pandora's box Panos Cosmatos paranormal activity paranormal objects parody Party Pills pastoral Pat Murano Pat Pollari Pataphysics Paul Reubens Pauline Oliveros PC Music peace pedalstare Pee-Wee Herman Penny Rimbaud Pepper Mill Rondo perception shifts Perfect Lives performance art Perma personal growth Pete Swanson Peter Shumann Ph.D. Phil Connors philosophy phonebook Phonocut photography pig-snails Pilgrim Simon pitchfork pitchfork-bashing pizza planetary chocolates plates Plonk art Plop art Plug.DJ plunderphonics podcasts Pokecrew Pokemon Polaris politics Polluted Water Popsicles Pollution PON STOP NOP Poolside Radio pop art pop culture popcorn_10 popsicles porn post-internet posters pranks predictions Primer Procrastination Principle products prog rock Prolaps promo psilocybin psychedelia psychiatry Psychic Ills Psychic TV psychology public art Public Art Fund punk punk cd commercial punk rock puppetry Quasimoto Questlove quotes R Plus 7 R.I.O. Radio Broadcasts radio stations Randy Gilson Randy Warhol Randyland rastafarianism raw meat Ray Lynch Raymond Pettibon Readful Things Real Love recipes recommended records record label record labels records recycling Red Bull Music Academy Red City Noise reel big fish reggae reincarnated Religion Rem Lezar Remodernism Remote Viewer Repo Man retro reviews Richard Beck Richard Sears Rick Moranis Rick Springfield Ricky Allman Rinse.fm RIO Rob Tyner Robedoor Robert Anton Wilson Robert Ashley Robert Greenberg Robert Indiana Robert Smithson Robin Arnott Robin Williams robots rock in opposition Roddy Piper Roger Ebert Roky Erickson Runzelstirn and Gurgelstock Ryan Hemsworth Sally Fields Salvador Dali sampling Santa Fe Sarah Davachi sausage scams scans scary Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark sci-fi science science fiction Scotland Scott Shaw sculpture Seatec Astronomy self improvement self portrait serious? Sesame Street Seth Cohen Seven Figures Severed Heads sex sex tapes sexy Shane Caruth Sharkula Sherman Hemsley sherpas shoegaze short films sign offline signs Simpsonwave Site-Specific Art ska ska against racism skateboarding skeptcis skull slackers slang Sleep Slime Cake sludgefest Slyme Records Snoop Dogg Snoop Lion So You'd Like to...Be an Anti-Gen Xer (Part 1) So You'd Like to...Be an Anti-Gen Xer (Part 2) social networks Soloman Chase Sonic Wonderland Sonic Youth Sopa Pipa Sophie sound sound archives sound art soundcloud SoundSelf space space plates Space Trips Spencer Longo SPF420 spirituality spoof sports St. Bernard's Sports Star Trek Star Wars Stephen Colbert Stephen Gammell Stereo Mood Steven Stapleton still life stoner comedies stoner metal stoner movies streaming Stump Subcultures subversive humor Subvertising Suicide summer Sun Araw Sun Ra Sunday is Raining sunglasses sunshine pop surrealism sustainable fashion Swans synesthesia System Focus T.V. Shows Taco Bell Taiwan TALSounds tattoos technology Television Ten Steps on How to Become a Slacker Terrence Malick thc The 13th Floor Elevators The Adventures of Pete & Pete the angles of comfort The Apples in Stereo The Art Box The B-52s The Baseball Card Vandals The Beach Bum The Big Lebowski The Birthday Party The Black Madonna The Bread and Puppet Theater The Coen Brothers The Congos The Day My Kid Went Punk The Family International The Frogs The Great Puke-off the handmaid's tale The Illuminatus! Trilogy The Incredible String Band The Jetsons The Last Trick The Life Stains The Lounge Lizards The Master The Master Musicians of Joujouka The Music Tapes The Now Age The OC The Odd Recommendation The Oh of Pleasure The Olivia Tremor Control The Red Shoes The Relative Band The Roots The Shape of Jazz to Come The Shining The Simpsons The Strokes The Sweet Homewreckers The Sylvers The Tubes The Velvet Underground The Wire therapy Theses on Punk They Live Thibault Zimmerman Things Organized Neatly things that would never have happened until they happen This is how NASA wakes up astronauts Thomas Newman Throbbing Gristle Thurston Moore Tinashe tiny hands tips To the Wonder Todd Solondz Tom Green Tony Futura Tony Sly Toro y Moi Tox Modell toys Trans Air Records trash Treasure Hunt trees Trevor Cox Trevor Reveur Trey Parker and Matt Stone tribute Trippy Turtle tromp l'oeil Tron tumblr Tupac turntable.fm Tuxedomoon TV Operas TV shows Twee twitter udi koorman UK underground art underground music unicorn unknown unpublished Unresponsive Design upcycling Upstream Color Urban Dictionary urban legends Urban Outfitters URL shows V/A - West Indies Funk 3 Val Kilmer Van Morrison vaporwave vapourwave vegan Velvet Underground VHS video Video Art video edit video games video rental videos Vince Guaraldi Vine vintage vinyl Vinyl Marketwatch Virtual Reality Wabi-Sabi Want to save your eyes? Change your light bulbs. Warp Records Washed Out Waterpark weapons websites WEDIDIT Weird Al wellness Wendy's WFMU What Makes A Bad Movie Enjoyable? WHTEBKGRND wifislilangel Wikipedia Wild Man Fishcher Will Oldham Williams Street Winston Riley Wolf Eyes Women Woods Yellow Swans youth culture youtube YouTube Poop Zebra Katz zen Zen Filmmaking Zim & Zou Zin-Say Zonal Zoom Lens

How Artist Gab Bois Launched Her Career on Instagram

Photo: Courtesy of Pegah Farahmand 

by Zoë Kendall

“I was such a Tumblr teenager,” says Gab Bois with a smile and a laugh. The Montréal-based artist is reminiscing about her formative years as a creator, spent scrolling the platform’s digital dashboard, an endless mood board of ideas and images which inspired her to first pick up her family’s old point-and-shoot camera to snap some of her photos. In 2016, the artist — like most of us — made the leap from Tumblr to Instagram. “I started posting on there for fun, shooting between classes or at night,” she says, of creating her signature, surrealist works. “I was doing it super DIY, in my bedroom.”

Just as quickly as Gab had hopped social media platforms, it seems, her work began taking off. “Pretty much overnight,” the artist says, her posts — sculpture-photograph hybrids featuring DIY Evian tearscondom lollipops, or a set of Nike braces — began accumulating thousands of likes.

When Nike reached out to Gab in 2019, she thought the jig was up. “I thought they were going to ask me to take [the post] down,” she says, referring to the viral braces, created with bootleg stickers sourced from Montréal’s Garment District. Rather than slapping the artist with a cease-and-desist, the sportswear giant offered to buy the image, printing it on T-shirts for its 2019 women’s collection. “That was one of my first brand deals and it was a huge one. I was freaking out,” Gab says. “I also love the concept that a real brand would put the bootleg logo on their real shirt.”

Gab’s art dabbles, precisely in this kind of duality, the line between real and fake, physical and digital, sculptural and photograph. It’s her knack for the uncanny — the delightfully novel and the unsettlingly familiar — that has struck, and continues, to strike a chord with social media scrollers, from Tumblr to Instagram and beyond. Today, the artist has garnered over 645,000 Instagram followers (and counting!), and has landed contracts with massive brands like VSCOand SSENSE, and fashion labels from Balenciaga to Jean Paul Gaultier.

Here, we sit down with the artist to talk about the precarity of social media, how to know when you’ve burned out, and, of course, about making the leap to become a full-time creator.

Can you tell us a bit about your career journey before becoming a full-time creator?

I always knew that I wanted to do something creative — whether a hobby or just as part of my life — but never really as a job or career, because it was too scary! I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher because I really love children; I love their imagination and being inspired by the craziest things that they say. I did two years of visual arts in CEGEP [a public college in Québec that bridges high school and university] where I learned painting, sculpting, art history, and a bit of everything, but nothing about having a career in the arts or the business side of arts, which I find is still very taboo. Because of that, I was like, “Let’s pick something stable, something I know I’m going to enjoy.” So I started a bachelor’s degree in primary school education.

During my undergrad, I was working part-time for a luxury consignment boutique in Montréal. At some point, I decided to pause my studies because my photography started getting a lot of traction on Instagram. That decision was super nerve-wracking, but I was always planning on going back to school if it didn’t work out.

After about a year and a half, I quit my part-time retail job and got a nine-to-five job doing photo-editing for a brand’s e-commerce platform.

What pushed you to leave your 9-to-5 and focus on being a full-time creator?

In 2019, the company I was working for went bankrupt and I was let go. I’ve always loved security and, to be honest, I don’t think I would have quit that job for a long time if the company hadn’t gone bankrupt. But I think that news came at a really good time for me, because I knew I could make a decent salary doing my creative work full-time. I told myself, “This is a good time to try it out. I have a little money saved up. And if it doesn’t work, I was going back [to another nine-to-five job].” [Laughs]. 

I was super lucky to have that time and space to try it out, to do a lot of outreach, and to focus on putting out really cool work that would get brands’ attention. It worked out and I ended up getting a lot of commissions after that. And it just kept going.

Can you tell us more about the support you’ve received from your community in growing your business?

In 2019, I flew out to New York City to meet up with some other artists whose work I admired and who I wanted to collaborate with: Nicole McLaughlin (who became one of my close friends after that trip); Didi Rojas (who does really amazing ceramics); and John Yuyi (who’s also a photographer and multi-disciplinary artist). We were in touch via Instagram DM and on FaceTime before I came, and when I got there, we did some collaborative pieces together. 

Seeing how they work and connecting with them about what we do for work really helped me feel more secure as an artist. I felt much more solid having these key people in my life to reach out to when I had questions about certain aspects of the work, or even specific clients, bouncing questions back and forth.

What are some of the challenges you faced in your first year as a creator?

I think the main challenge is being scared that what I do is just a trend, and that people will move on and forget about it. It started overnight, and it will end the same way. Especially in the beginning, when I had no track record, I was scared it would all go away as quickly as it started. 

Even today, when I tell myself I have a good track record, my mind always goes there: “This is your last month. Take every deal that you can. This isn’t forever.” That feeling is something I have in me every single day and is definitely a source of stress, but it always keeps me on my toes, so it’s good and bad.

 

You came up on social media platforms like Tumblr and then Instagram. Can you tell us about the unique experience and challenges you’ve faced using social media as a creator?

I think it’s important for me to say that my experience with social media has been mostly positive because I owe, like, 95% of my success today to it.

In the beginning, I was confused as to how much of myself I wanted to put on [Instagram]. I work with social media, but posting about myself is not a reflex that I have. I take photos of things I’ve put together, but not everyday moments in my life. 

I had this idea that putting my face on social media and talking to my audience would create a closer-knit community. I felt that pressure but I didn’t want to do that at all; I wanted to keep it all about the work and not about me. At first, it was a weird balance to find and it took some time, but now I never post my face and I’m a lot more comfortable with that.

Can you speak with us about your experiences with burnout as a creator?

I don’t think I’m a role model for this at all [laughs], because I have a huge tendency to never take breaks and push through [with my work]. Especially during COVID, I really burned myself out, taking every job I could because I didn’t know what was going to happen in the future. 

The only time I’m ever able to stop is when I start feeling anxious or depressed in my personal life. That’s when I’m like, “No, this isn’t worth sacrificing my health or my mental health for.”

 

What are some tools or services you’d recommend to freelance creators who are just getting started?

I recently got this website as a sponsored post on Instagram. I always hate sponsored posts but I’ve been telling my friends to check it out. It’s called Artenda and it provides information about a lot of artist residencies and grants, including the duration, where it is, how much it costs, and the application deadline. All of these things are really good resources. I’d also say hire a good accountant.

What’s some advice you would give to someone who wants to pursue a career similar to yours?

Surrounding yourself with one or two key people who know about the business side of freelancing is super important. There are so many things [about freelancing] that we don’t get taught in schools, like taxes and contracts. It’s super boring stuff, but it can really impact your business. Administration is 30 to 40% of my job. It doesn’t show, but that’s a huge part of what you do [as a freelancer]. I do it myself, but at first I didn’t know how to do it, and there weren’t that many resources available. Having a few people who knew about that side of freelancing helped me a lot.

Something I would do differently, in terms of getting my work out there, is doing more outreach in physical contexts — more physical exhibitions, more physical work, not always taking apart my pieces after shooting the photos but keeping them. I wish I would have found more of a balance between the digital and the physical. I think those mediums really complement each other. Together, they build a strong base so that you’re not so dependent on social media, because you never know what’s going to happen with it. The real work is much more stable, in my opinion.

 

No drone unturned: tracing the sound that unites ancient and modern

 

From primitive instruments and sacred chants to today’s minimalist electronica and metal, drone music has a long and mystical history. A new book investigates

Tuned in … Harry Sword, author of Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion

by: 

From the womb – where the rushing of maternal blood is heard loud and clear at 88 decibels – through myriad historical, spiritual and subcultural pathways, our connection to the drone runs deep. Many ancient instruments – didgeridoobullroarercarnyx – produced sustained tones, while the ancient Greeks evoked the delirium of Dionysus with the drone of the Aulos pipes. Indeed, religious practice all over the world, from the sacred Buddhist Om to haunting Gregorian chant, continues, as it has done for centuries, to centre the drone as a sonic enabler of meditative transcendence.


In Monolithic Undertow, I trace the drone from those ancient beginnings through the 20th century, where it underpinned sounds of many divergent persuasions – not limited to the New York minimalist ley line that linked the Theatre of Eternal Music to the Velvet Underground; the vital influence of Ravi Shankar’s sitar drone on the ecstatic jazz of Alice Coltrane and the Beatles nascent psychedelic experiments; the punk axis that leads from the Stooges to Sonic Youth; and the physical metallic bass weight of Earth and Sunn O))).

In short, the drone has bewitched for millennia, exhorting us to succumb to the joy of hypnotic immersion. Take the following as starting points in a journey that can lead you any which way: turn on, tune in, drone out …

Éliane Radigue – Kyema


Has anybody ever produced music of such beauty, emotional depth and sheer mesmeric density from such sparse elements? Now in her 80s, Éliane Radigue has been at the forefront of avant-garde electronics since the 50s, when she worked as an engineer with Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry at Paris’s Studio d’Essai, the epicentre of musique concrète. Yet her solo electronic works (starting with her hypnotic feedback works of the late 60s) were a world away from the busy field recording collages of her musique concrète apprenticeship.

Exclusively produced using the ARP 2500, a notoriously complex modular synthesiser, Radigue focused on pure drone pieces that unfurled at a glacial pace. A master of the process of creative reduction, she carves away any superfluous sound, noting frequency ratios on beautiful hand-drawn charts and arriving at an immersive sound sculpted to perfection. Kyema (Intermediate States) is the first movement of her Trilogie de la Mort – a three-hour epic informed by the Tibetan Book of the Dead, sonically mirroring the passage of the soul between life and death. Foreboding and beautiful.

Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka


The Master Musicians of Joujouka, a group of Moroccan Sufi trance musicians from the foothills of the Rif mountains, make a joyous, hypnotic cacophony. Their sound dates back centuries, using techniques passed from father to son. Long associated with the beat poets, who gravitated to bohemian Tangier throughout the 1950s and 60s, the Master Musicians of Joujouka were introduced to writers Paul Bowles and Brion Gysin by Moroccan painter Mohamed Hamri, whose uncle was one of the bandleaders. Gysin, in particular, was captivated by the music, stating that it was the sound that he wanted to hear for the rest of his life. He later employed the Masters as house band in the 1001 Nights restaurant that he ran in Tangier with Hamri.

Hamri also introduced his friend, Rolling Stone Brian Jones, to the Masters. In 1968, Jones recorded this live album, capturing the sound of the annual Bou Jeloud festivities that celebrate the appearance in the 15th century of a Pan-like half-man, half-goat figure said to bestow fertility, a bountiful harvest and musical secrets. Each year a villager plays the Bou Jeloud: sewn into freshly slaughtered goat skins, he exhorts people to dance by whacking them with olive branches, while the music focuses on fever-pitch pipe drones, gruff call-and-response chants, ethereal flutes and frenetic handheld drums.

The Master Musicians of Joujouka strongly contest the notion that drone-based music is calming: theirs is an energetic, frenetic sound. Jones’s sensitive post-production dub effects (mainly echo and reverb) were subtle, but add to the head-twisting psychedelic density of the music.

Earth – Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine


Earth are ground zero for drone metal. Fusing the tortoise-slow crawlspace of La Monte Young-era minimalism with metallic textures, their debut album Earth 2 (1993) was released on Sub Pop during the heyday of grunge but, focusing as it did on slowly unfurling, percussion-less drones, was a million miles from the frenetic angst of labelmates Nirvana and Mudhoney.

Inspired by the churning sludge of Melvins – the ceremonial majesty of the Washington band’s 1992 album Lysol, in particular – Earth’s Dylan Carlson took slowness in the metal sphere to hitherto unimagined extremes. Down-tuning to oblivion, each ringing chord drawn out for as long as possible, he obsessed over vintage valve amps and obscure pedals, the grain of the sound taking precedence over melodic progression. Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine is the centrepiece of Earth 2 – an imperious half-hour of sheer drone power. With serious volume tempered by a distinct grace, the record paved the way for early Sunn O))) among many others on the underground, and is widely regarded the vital signpost in the drone metal underground.

Angus MacLise – Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda


The original drummer in the Velvet Underground, Angus MacLise was a true bohemian who led a life straight out of a Kerouac novel. A poet, publisher, occultist, calligrapher and producer of some of the strangest drone music ever made, he played for a number of years in La Monte Young’s group the Theatre of Eternal Music before joining – and leaving – the Velvets in 1965.

Operating within the underground of the New York underground, MacLise produced obscure soundtracks, narcotised sonic sketches and lo-fi field recording tapestries between the mid-60s and late-70s, the vast majority unreleased until his soundtrack to Ira Cohen’s 1968 underground art film Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda saw the light of day in 1999, followed by a sprawling compilation, The Cloud Doctrine, in 2002.

The soundtrack to Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda features all the beguiling hallmarks of MacLise’s sound: handheld drums, disembodied voices, field recordings of unknown provenance. Every sound source is obfuscated, covered in crackling layers of tape hiss and echo. The effect is truly psychedelic, an abyssal descent into a steaming, lotus-isle dreamscape. His discography is by some distance the least travelled of the wider Velvets oeuvre, but seriously magical.

Zonal – System Error


Pairing the Bug (AKA Kevin Martin) and Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu) on production with apocalyptic vocals from experimental musician and poet Moor Mother, Zonal is an exercise in unbearable tension and cavernous bass weight. Between them, Martin and Broadrick have explored every possible permutation of bass culture, and Moor Mother produced one of the past decade’s most intense and powerful records in the shape of Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes.

Pivoting around enveloping drones and system-rattling sub-frequencies, System Error sums up all that was special about the group’s self-titled 2019 album in four concise minutes. Broadrick and Martin’s telepathic studio energy trades on their 30-year creative partnership, intertwining layers of rich, distorted tones, and Moor Mother’s powerful flow ties the whole bleak tableau together.

Sarah Davachi – Midlands


One of the most idiosyncratic electronic producers of recent years, the Canadian sound artist creates subtle drone pieces that fuse baroque atmospherics with the warm, idiosyncratic and sometimes unpredictable tonality of old analogue synths in combination with live instrumentation.

Inspired by sacred spaces, the minimalist aesthetics of La Monte Young and Éliane Radigue – and her early access to an enviable selection of instruments and synths while working at the National Music Centre in Calgary – Davachi works in the electroacoustic sphere, augmenting rich organ drones with subtle electronic post production. Much of her work has combined rich tones from machines such as the ARP and Buchla synthesiser with organ, harmonium and piano. Last year’s double album, Cantus, Descant, was her most ambitious record yet, featuring her vocals for the first time. Midlands layers reed organ drones against distant rumbles but is also Davachi at her most melodically progressive; as emotionally moving as it is immersive.

 Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion by Harry Sword is published by White Rabbit (£20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

MKRdezign

Contact Form

Name

Email *

Message *

Powered by Blogger.
Javascript DisablePlease Enable Javascript To See All Widget