Colin Self respite ?? levity for the nameless ghost in crisis [ARTPL-228] Japan

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For the nameless ghosts in peril in the darkness, prepare to clad yourself in ?grest?h ?�ö ?gtranquility?h and place yourself among strangers. Colin Self, an artist/choreographer based in Berlin and New York, a band member of Holly Herndon, and a support act for Radiohead's European tour in 2016, releases his third album on the prestigious RVNG Intl. label! 'respite ?�ö levity for the nameless ghost in crisis' is a greeting after years of conscious exile. To complete this work, Colin abandoned the comfortable familiarity of collaboration with others, at least on this plane, and instead dedicated himself to a quieter, more physically specter voice that tries to speak through them at night. To make their voices heard by nameless spirits, Colin decided to sing in Latin and Polari (a cantish, slanted form of English used over 500 years ago to find selective clarity during arrests of the underworld and queer forces). It was solitude for a deeper connection, as he sings in "Losing Faith": "I lost everything, but I kept moving / I kept breathing through your memory." The period since the release of his 2018 full album "Siblings" and the EP "Orphans" a year later has brought about significant changes in the artist's life. From the deaths of countless friends and loved ones to unimaginable global losses, the painful sacrifices of death have forced the artist to withdraw inward, learning to reside in the darkness he had long shunned. Through years of meditation practice and often working through the night, singing in a shimmering language that may not automatically reach our ears was for Colin a way of paying homage to beings that do not exist in this world. "The people around me may not know what this word means, but the trans and queer ghosts who listen to the music or watch the performances are all having a really good time," Colin says. "These songs sound gorgeous, but they're all about blasphemous things like the police, eating ass, sex work. I wanted to find a way to breathe life into the act of hiding the explicit within the mundane sounds of pop music." In an essay discussing Greer Lankton and the dual use of the word ?gdoll?h (which simultaneously refers to Lankton?fs primary medium and the trans women who identify as such), scholar McKenzie Wark argues that ?gLankton?fs dolls are never beautiful, because beauty means an approximation of an ideal form. But they become cute when adorned with clothes, jewelry, and styling.?h In Lankton's eerie and awkward bodily imagery, which mimics a certain trance-like sublimity, Wark finds works that reject the comfort of familiar forms and pull to the extreme. Music channeling the ghost of an elder like Lankton evokes jagged edges, edges that tear through space enough for fragments of grace to slip in behind. Followers of Colin's work will find familiar sound forms in 'r?�öL4nGc'. From vibrant electronic experiments to soaring and towering vocals, he shows no signs of slowing down after years of silence. "Busy Walks Into the Memory Palace" is ass-throwing dance music for a body that doesn't yet exist, making Colin seem like a time traveler. In "Dissumlato," Colin seems sealed away in a spaceship, with only synthesizers and his own voice as companions, playing for himself and someone far away who might be listening. Turning to the cracks in the queer community Colin has nurtured over the years, and to more global concerns, "gajo" uses a two-step beat, weaving together chamber orchestral manipulation and modulated electronic vocals. As she sings, "There's something calling me from over there / It's my own choice in this life," we hear Colin contemplating the ecstatic fear of reaching out to the unknown parts of each other, and the lack of space to transform without removing the barriers that separate us. The album's closing track, "?�ö," a nearly 11-minute suite (also released as part of the four-track EP "remniscate" showcasing Colin's new music), is central to the album's themes. The lemniscate (?�ö), the formal name of the mathematical symbol most of us know as the infinity symbol, has guided Colin back and forth in an endless quest to carry meaning from one realm to another. This looping journey requires immeasurable humility and the willingness to shed the stability of a bound self, instead opening one's heart to the cries from the dark corners, still too fragile to reveal oneself in the daylight. "The lemniscate begins with prayer, and darkness is drawn into a portal where I have to confront death, loss, grief, and sorrow, and then I emerge on the other side with clarity," Colin says. "Instead of thinking of darkness as a place of terror, important things often happen in the shadows. We cannot know or see [these spirits], but we must believe they exist." Colin's joyous singing is the medium for these messages, but if you listen carefully, you may encounter someone whose existence you never knew existed.