photo credit Jane Chardiet
Pharmakon is sharing the second single from her upcoming album Devour today. “Spit It Out” is a dense track of dizzying electronics featuring what perhaps might be Chardiet’s most harrowing vocal performance yet. Listen here.
Devour marks the fourth full-length record from New York City based artist Margaret Chardiet’s project Pharmakon, and the most intense output of her 12+ years creating industrial noise. Like her previous albums, Devour comes with a strong concept that is exorcised throughout the five demolishing tracks on the album, using imagery and language of self-cannibalism as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans.
Each of the five songs echoes a stage of grief associated with this cyclical chamber of self-destruction and the chaos surrounding us that leads us to devour ourselves in an attempt to balance the agony. The album was recorded by Ben Greenberg (Uniform) and is the first Pharmakon album recorded live in studio. The A and B sides were each recorded as a continuous take with vocals from start to finish, marking a totally new process for the artist that allows the ferocity and immediacy of her live performance to resonate throughout. Devour also explores new sonic territory, with denser electronics, groovier hooks, and moments of her most unhinged vocal deliveries to date. As one of the premiere vanguards of modern industrial and power electronics, Chardiet continuously pushes the genres and everyone involved in them, and with the release of Devour, she has once again changed the game.
Artist Statement:“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.
Listen: Pharmakon – “Spit It Out” https://youtu.be/QdsnvXudBts
Pre-Order: Pharmakon – Devour http://hyperurl.co/DevourPharmakon
Tour Dates
September 6th – Raleigh, NC @ Hopscotch Music Fest
September 18th – Richmond, VA @ Wonderland
September 19th – Atlanta, GA @ 529
September 20th – New Orleans LA @ Santos
September 22nd – Dallas TX @ The Nines
September 25th – Austin TX @ Hotel Vegas
September 27 – Los Angeles, CA @ Private DTLA Location
September 29 – San Francisco @ Gray Area
October 1st – Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
October 2nd – Olympia, WA @ Cryptatropa
October 3rd – Seattle, WA @ Kremwerk
October 4th – Victoria, BC
October 5th – Vancouver, BC
October 7th – Edmonton, AB @ 9910
Octover 8th – Calgary, AB @ The Palomino
October 11th – Minneapolis, MN @ Part Wolf MPLS
October 12th – St Louis, MO
October 13th – Chicago, IL
October 16th – Cincinnati, OH
October 17th – Pittsburgh, PA @ Gooski’s
October 18th – Cleveland, OH @ Now That’s Class
October 19th – Toronto, ON @ Longboat Hall
October 20th – Montreal, QC @ PHI Centre
October 25th – Providence, RI @ AS220
October 26th – Philadelphia, PA @ PhilaMOCA
October 27th – Baltimore, MD @ Metro Gallery
Pharmakon
Devour
Sacred Bones Records
August 30, 2019
1. Homeostasis
2. Spit It Out
3. Self-Regulating System
4. Deprivation
5. Pristine Panic / Cheek By Jowl