Pharmakon
Self-Regulating System
Sacred Bones
Want to hear something fucked up? Well, sit down, draw the blinds and turn out the lights, Pharmakon has just dropped Self-Regulating System ahead of the August 30 release of new LP Devour. Who, or what, is Pharmakon? It’s the experimental noise project of New York based Margaret Chardiet. Spine tingling noise comprised, blood curdling wails, near death coughing and sickening spew sounds embedded within ominous industrial beats. 2013’s Abandon notably placed 31 in Pitchfork’s 33 Best Industrial Albums of All Time back in June.
Self-Regulating System is a random generation of organised industrial chaos and morbid vocals, morphed into seamless inharmonious sequence. The occasional abruption occurs in the form of some rotten wailing. Forcefully kicking you into something dark, the entire song acts as the preface soundtrack to a torturous murder scene.
Devour was described by Chardiet as using “self-cannibalisation as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans; on cellular, individual, societal and species-wide scales. In our minds, our politics and our species, humans are self-destructing”. It’s as deep as it is fucked up.
Describe it as you wish, intricate industrial expressionism of a depreciating species or murderous fucking noise; it’s different and somehow engaging. Sometimes anyway, I certainly wouldn’t be playing it at a child’s party or at the local retirement village’s Sunday disco. It’s best suited to the confinements of your own home, preferably with soundproofing so the neighbours don’t call the police, or an exorcist.
There’s no doubt Devour, much like everything else in the Pharmakon discography, will be somewhat fucked up. If you’re up for some randomness, then check it out, it might just be the noise you need in your life right now. For most, unlikely, but you never know.
RYAN ELLIS
