New York City based experimental artist, Margaret Chardiet aka Pharmakon, will be releasing her fourth full length, Devour, incoming on August 30th, 2019 via Sacred Bones Records. Devour is a concept record themed on self-destruction, and it was recorded by Ben Greenberg (Uniform), being the first Pharmakon album recorded live in studio.
True to the unconventional nature of her immersive artistry, Pharmakon sounds disquieting and baleful as ever on new track, Self-Regulating System, off the forthcoming album. It's a characteristic mixture of the artist's brilliant sound founded on power electronics, noise and industrial, and it sounds intimidatingly cutting for its over six minute entirety.
Alongside the album's announcement and the new track come a brief visual album teaser, and a not so brief, yet, incredibly interesting artist statement by Margaret Chardiet:
"Devour uses self-cannibalization as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans; on cellular, individual, societal and species-wide scales. In our cells, our minds, our politics and our species, humans are self-destructing. But this behavior does not happen in a vacuum. It is an instinctive inward response to a world of increasing outward violence, greed, and oppression. Turning these wounds toward ourselves can be seen as an attempt at 'balancing feedback', within a never-ending positive feedback loop of cause and effect. With this view, the blame is placed not within the individual, but with the world they must contend with, and a society that is designed to fail them - to keep them gnashing and wailing, inflicted with an all-devouring hunger that inevitably turns in on the self. Those that pit them against each other grin from the sidelines, bellies full. Those who see beyond the veil need to obscure the horrid sight by any means necessary, but respite is always brief- nothing can dampen the glare from behind the veil. This album is dedicated to all who were lost to their own demise, all who have been institutionalized; whether in prison, psychiatric facilities, or drug rehabilitation. It is for all those ostracized by and isolated from a totality which chews them up alive in a self-cannibalizing caste system. Here, where martyrs, slaves, and pharmakos are not eradicated, but simply called by another name. 'ABOUT THE SHALLOWNESS OF SANITY'... To be well adjusted in this system is to be oblivious and unfeeling. This is for the rest of us, who understand that chaos, madness, pain and even self-destruction are natural and inevitable responses to an unjust and disgusting world of our own making."
Artist photo by Jane Chardiet
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