Single Review: Pharmakon – Body Betrays Itself
Courtesy of Ilia Rogatchevski
★★★★☆
Ten foot blast doors slide open slowly, as if dancing with acute viral sirens. Rotating lights cast brief, but regular glimpses at the viscous excrement strewn across the textured killing floor. Black leather feet glide across the room. Lightning. An iron grip lifts a disillusioned stun gun up to the forehead of the first foolish animal. Thunder. One hulking thud is soon followed by ninety-five more, in regular industrial succession. Rows upon rows of famished cattle lie writhing on the myriapod belt. Waiting, like conjugal virgins, for the merciful blade to descend. Eyes rolling. Limbs paralysed. Mind wandering.
Bestial Burden, Pharmakon‘s second long player for Sacred Bones Records, is inspired by the betraying body. Four days prior to her first European tour, the New York-based noise artist – born Margaret Chardiet – awoke to find herself in agonizing pain and unable to move. Unbeknownst to her, a cyst had been slowly gestating within, eventually causing one of her organs to fail. Major surgery was followed by a month of recovery. The complicated nature of Chardiet’s rehabilitation compelled her to contemplate the “complex network of systems just beneath the skin, any of which were liable to fail or falter at any time.” This series of traumatic and debilitating events brought the dichotomy of the corporeal and cerebral selves to the forefront of Chardiet’s consciousness.
It is refreshing to find a woman propagating violent catharsis through the medium of sound in a musical paradigm dominated by testosterone. It would be unwise to claim that violence is a distinctively male occupation. As uncouth as it may be, brutality is just another method of communicating emotion. However, Body Betrays Itself is not an anarcha-feminist attack on the global patriarchal order. It is an example of visceral expatriation as means of metaphysical exploration. In this context, Pharmakon has more in common with the art of Hermann Nitsch or Genesis P. Orridge than, say, Death Grips. What sets Chardiet apart from her contemporaries is her method. She draws influence from her immediate environment: recording, sampling and distorting her experiments with industrial materials. The results of this intuitive approach point to the tensions inherent in our desire to rise above our limitations. The mind is capable of many astronomical achievements, but the body, prone to disease and decay, sometimes gets in the way of intellectual ambitions.
Pharmakon is currently on tour in Europe, supporting Swans. Bestial Burden is due for release on Tuesday 14 October via Sacred Bones Records.
