k[A]l3utun 0v[E]rdr1v3 is back. This time with a new alias : FR[A]CKist3nZ. A portmanteau-word, combining elements of “Fractal”, “Hacker” and Cronenberg’s “Existenz”.
The Fractal comes from euFräktus’s “holofractal” software, created for the Brasilia Laptop Orchestra which k[A]l3utun 0v[E]rdr1v3 has adopted. But rather than using it, as intended (as live improvisation), he records multiple tracks, whacks the volume to the max, and weaves them together into a torrential blast of almost pure electric noise. Of the kind that either razes cities or helps you get a good relaxing sleep.
This is an extraordinary EP, which highlights something that may be less apparent on the previous k[A]l3utun 0v[E]rdr1v3 outing (dionysian-industrial.bandcamp.com/album/h4ck1ng-fantasma-outras-bruxarias-do-c4os), a strong connection with Brazilian popular / folkloric culture. Most obviously here, the lyrics are in simple rhyming couplets, derived from popular story-telling and especially the “cordel” (or “cordel nordestino” as they are largely associated with the older rural culture of Brazil’s North-East).
Cordels are small, cheaply printed booklets, telling a story or describing a place, in the form of a rhyming ballad. Usually accompanied by a distinctive xylographic (woodcut) print style illustration. k[A]l3utun 0v[E]rdr1v3 itself, and the artist’s other projects, all dialogue with this popular style, using both the rhyme-scheme in this cybernoise music and reminiscent images across many visual products such as zines and videos.
For the cover of this release, we return to the artist’s rich mythopunk world-building. The figure of Tamanduá Bandeira Negra : a cyborg hybrid of giant-anteater and humanoid, is a far-future historian investigating the long extinct experimental culture of the cerrado, through a series of zines and compilation CDs. We see, also, the Black Whale : an iconic image of a bionic ark, preserving knowledge as it swims the oceans that were once dry land. These future observers look back at “the invasion of the screens” : our own historical drama as we merge into our technologies of spectacle.
Lyrically, you might be surprised. Noise is, almost by definition, eschatological. And there are passages of this EP that feel like entropy has finally won out and a white hiss is all that remains at the end of time. And yet there is much positivity here. Utopian yearning. Freedom from religion and borders and pointless rituals. Even the track “Open Veins”, while documenting fears of unknown futures and steering close to the feeling that Bruce Sterling describes as “Dark Euphoria” (“You can’t believe the possibilities but never thought you’d have to dread them so much.”) is punctuated by pretty glints and pings. As if we are floating with flickering hope through a crystal cavern.
The final track is almost a rebirth of the soul, beyond humanity. Where a flood of white noise has washed the world clean and new again. And we have become utterly alien. When the poetical lyrics arrive, it seems this is less a perspective from that future, and more our, primitive, campfire stories looking forward to it.
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