Coàgul “la mort és dolça / ascensor genital” C30
Coàgul (clot) is the aural platform that Marc O’Callaghan uses in order to “accumulate” (coagulate) certain energies in the particular spatial point in which this project manifests itself.
This is carried out through an overload of synthetic, distorted sounds, which form a mass of repetitive sonic hypnotism. Through singing, shouting, or industrial flourishes that hint at subtle harmonies implicit in the noise itself.
This tape contains 15 minutes – two clots, one on each side. It was recorded on April 22, 2010 in the neighborhood of Coll in Barcelona, in the author’s maternal nest.
One side contains “La Mort És Dolça” (Death is sweet). This clot is like the insides of a large temple packed with cyclopean columns, where strange rituals are practiced. The deliberate synthetic beats embody the columns, the silences are the dark space in between, and the timid metallic whispers that emerge suggest ornate decorations made of precious gems or extradimensional unknown beings that materialize as these whispers gain power.
Throughout the monotonous journey through this mysterious sonic space, a Faustian increasingly desperate voice repeats the song title as an anti-mantra. It is an evidence that everyone knows deep inside, but that often hurts to be aware of. The more intense is the pleasure, more out of ourselves we are, the closer to death. It encourages us to recreate viciously in this painful certainty as sending it in the shape of a coded message to the unconscious, “La Mort és Dolça” is a tool to disable this psychic equation that nature imposes upon us. And so, somehow, to make us less human and closer to the divine status.
The other side contains “L’Ascensor Genital” (the Genital Elevator). This clot is a morass of distortion with a cheerful rhythm but dark and haunting atmosphere. Throughout the delirious ride through the foams of these timeless waves, a rueful voice recites some tragic chants of a tone, insistently repeating the directive: “sense parar – fins arribar / sense parar – fins despertar” (non stop- until the arrival / non stop – until the awakening). The states in which ordinary consciousness remains in the background, and the mind expands beyond its own prison are the ideal to overcome the human condition and unite with the divine whole. The climax of intercourse is one of those states, and this song is specially designed to promote this religious application of orgasm, to “take heaven by assault.”
In summary, the two clots of this film are magickal dehumanizing tools, one in the direction of pain and the other in the direction of pleasure. They function as opposite but complementary ways, and this is reflected in the ambivalent nature in the mechanism that a cassette tape imposes: when we reach the far end of the pain and we flip to the other side, we automatically find ourselves at the leading edge of pleasure and when we reached the far end of pleasure, we are automatically placed at the leading edge of pain.
The illustrations that accompany the release are mechanical revelations, executed by the trembling hand of the author, that put the listener in the context of the psychoactive Faustian imagery of this work.
-Marc O’Callaghan, Barcelona 2011
Limited to 50 copies
Price: 5.00€
