(Break World Records)
The fourth release by Bolivian American producer Elysia Crampton contains just six songs and is 19 minutes long, but, as with all her work, it contains a universe of history and philosophical thought. In February, Crampton opened a performance with a lecture about an Andean god, and her self-titled album brings with it similar extra-textual depths. It’s dedicated to Ofelia, a woman credited with removing the mask from the female devil costumes worn by queer and trans people in Aymaran street festivities in the 1960s, and it is steeped in Andean and indigenous rhythms and ideas: taypi, the concept of space/time that Crampton describes as “radical asymmetry”, and pachakuti, the potential destruction of a power structure or hierarchy.
You can go as deep into the wormhole as you want with this stuff, and, if you can wrap your head around it, it may illuminate a deep listen. But no good record ever required footnotes – and nor, fortunately, do the immediate pleasures of Elysia Crampton. At that February show, Crampton heralded the musical portion of the evening by sampling the Universal Pictures theme tune, in a wink to her music’s maximalist, physical qualities, which recall the sounds of war. The sharp glints that slice through Pachuyma evoke sword-fighting, the gothic chunter beneath the jaws of some marauding beast, and rave horns pierce the melee like a fanfare across the dancefloor battleground. There are few hooks in Crampton’s work; instead, sounds and textures recur, giving the impression of some narrative tapestry: the gunshots of Nativity later return to pummel Pachuyma, while the chomping jaws of Pachuyma take on a crushing ferocity in Moscow (Mariposa Voladora).
Continue reading...by Laura Snapes via Electronic music | The Guardian
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