GOLEM MECANIQUE ANNOUNCES ALBUM SIAMO TUTTI IN PERICOLO

GOLEM MECANIQUE ANNOUNCES ALBUM SIAMO TUTTI IN PERICOLO

ARRIVING VIA IDEOLOGIC ORGAN ON 14TH MARCH

“Golem Mecanique touch[es] upon the ashes and fibres of back metal and the DNA of gothic music, literature, sorcery, and most of all—poetry. “ – Stephen O’Malley

The last words that poet and visionary film director Pier Paolo Pasolini said in his final interview were “Siamo tutti in pericolo”; translated: we are all in danger. Pasolini was then brutally murdered on a beach in Italy, a case which is still cold today.

On this album, named after the man’s final public words, Golem Mecanique loses herself on that same Italian beach alongside his body and translates her observations and mourning into a devastating musical landscape. Siamo tutti in pericolo will be released via Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ label on 14th March.

Siamo tutti in pericolo is dangerous, conveying the darkness and uneasy nature of both the art Pasolini created when he was alive and the circumstances of his murder. In her early teens, Golem taped the Pasolini film Accatone when it was shown on television and watched it the next day after school. In her words, “it was an earthquake!”, immediately leaving a great impression on her as it was unlike anything she had ever seen before. She describes the feeling she has when watching a Pasolini film as “silent violence” – a cold and radical response which calls into question her beliefs about the behaviour of people and lies and truth. She hopes to evoke this feeling with her music – a melding of beauty and dread.

Today, she shares the track “La Notte” from the album…

Listen to “La Notte”

“I tried to be the eyes that saw in the dark, the voice that told what his last day and night were, the ghost that summons the memory. I have composed songs as if they were traditional ones, using repetitive patterns in traditional rhythms, like tarantella. The drone is minimalist, and I tried to give the drone box the sound of a traditional hurdy-gurdy.

I just wanted his body not to lay alone on that cold beach.

There’s nothing left, there’s nothing, nothing.We have never existed.Reality is these shapes on the summit of the Heavens – from La Rabbia/Anger by Pier Paolo Pasolini” – Golem Mecanique

Golem Mecanique as a project was begun by Karen Jebane in 2007, following her teenage years of playing in bands in high school. At first, starting on her own, she used tape recorders and reel tapes to capture field recordings. Her early music was a product of recorded sounds, stitched into dadaist experimental songs, to which she then added her voice in various ways. The discovery of several modern composers, including Cage, Schaeffer, Niblock and Alvin Lucier, was instrumental in developing her sound. Studying and reading about music opened a lot of fields for her, including graphic scores – and eventually led her to the almighty drone.

Using drones enables her to create a “black, quiet sea” to reveal themes of fate, mourning and loneliness in this album. Like much of Golem Mecanique’s past work, this album includes her use of the drone box. The drone box was built by Leo Maurel, a French instrument maker whose work is focused on drone instruments inspired by traditional ones – such as hurdy-gurdies and organs. The drone box instrument is integral to the life of Golem Mecanique as a project, giving her the confidence to work as a solo artist after many years in bands. She deems the voice of the drone to be “the diva”, the main part of her musical architecture, which finds her voice hovering above its endless tones.

Adding her voice to the project cemented the idea of Golem Mecanique and helped her build what she calls “sacred experimental music,” which lay dormant inside her for many years. The lyrics on this album undergo what she terms “destruction,” a degrading of words as the sounds are modulated and the meaning is lost. Her music is her “dark church”—music created out of poetry, literature, and contemplation, but also mysticism and darkness.

But this particular release returns to Pasolini every time, the tone of his work capturing her as she also considered the brutality of his death. “He talks about the beauty and a kind of purity I am always looking for. He plays with mythology, with cruelty, with violence as poetry.” Golem sees her work reflected in his and a kindred spirit in his approach to art. “I just wanted his body not to lay alone on that cold beach.”