Pharmakon is Margaret Chardiet, a native New Yorker who sprang onto the local underground experimental scene at the tender age of seventeen. That, however, is the only tender thing about this noise project. A founding member of the Red Light District Collective in Far Rockaway, she has always been a fundamental figurehead in this subculture. Her voice is her main instrument as she catapults it between visceral screams and haunting melodies, all of which lay under heavy layers of reverb to create a demonic wasteland of brutal, bruising sound. The goal is always the same: that is, to explore what it means to be human at its most bare, uncomfortable truth.
She has recently released Devour, the fourth Pharmakon album for Brooklyn imprint Sacred Bones. The previous three releases explore humanity more inwardly, an exploration of Chardiet herself: The first Sacred Bones release, Abandon, examined intrapersonal violence. She penned Bestial Burden while recovering from major surgery, grappling with ominous reality that our bodies can betray us at any moment, “the human as an isolated consciousness stuck inside a rotting vessel.” The next release, Contact, flipped the focus, examining the ways our minds can transcend our physical forms.
Devour focuses on humanity’s tendency to self-destruct, as evidenced by the album art itself, an image of Chardiet consuming a plaster cast of her own face. However, she pulls back the lens to look at the world more broadly, the ways in which an increasingly uncertain and violent world harms its inhabitants mentally and physically. Employing this imagery of self-cannibalization, she goes so far as to suggest self-destruction as the only antidote to the chaos, articulated best on “Self-Regulating System,” on which she haunts us with lyrics like: “Caught in a cycle of cause and effect / maybe self-destruction is a viable self-regulating system.” Each of the five tracks represents a stage of grief, all “associated with this cyclical chamber of self-destruction and the chaos surrounding us that leads us to devour ourselves in an attempt to balance out the agony,” a statement released in anticipation of the album read.
That being said, Chardiet never intended the album to be consumed as piecemeal tracks, instead wishing it to be heard as two sides, A and B. Each side was recorded as a continuous vocal take from start to finish, meant to emulate the urgency of her live performances. Layered with dense electronics, funkier hooks, and her trademark animalistic vocals, she succeeds.
All in all, this is a satisfying listen, though not an easy one. You will come out the other side shaken and bruised. It says a lot about the state of the world that the last three albums I’ve reviewed, this one included, explore the myriad ways this constant chaos has negatively impacted our wellbeing, from the softest modern Americana to the harshest industrial noise. At this point, all we can do is sit back and listen.
On Saturday night, half of New York City filed into Grand Prospect Hall for DFA Records’ twelve-year annivesary party, hosted by the aural, modern day equivalent of Jay Gatsby – Red Bull Music Academy, who have been throwing insanely well curated parties, shows and talks in far-flung venues all over the city over the past month or so. Tickets were hard to come by, released in bunches only to sell out immediately. So if you couldn’t get one, or if, say, you don’t prefer the glossy synths and throbbing beats of Yacht, James Murphy, or Planningtorock so much as you do Pharmakon’s heart-rending shrieks or Vår’s punishing electronic wave of noise, then you did what around a hundred or so people did instead and crammed yourself into pop-up DIY venue The Rink.
At the former (possibly current?) photo studio, there were no laser beams. Just a built-out loft with a sweep in one corner, covered in white plastic, Anthony Naples DJing remixes of the theme from Twin Peaks, a metal tub filled with water, and a pile of dirt. That was, until Pharmakon and Vår took the stage, together (billed cleverly as Vårmakon), just after 11PM. They wore matching white shirts and black pants that vaguely gave them the appearance of cater-waiters, but instead of rattling off the nightly specials with the skill of a Marlow & Sons pro, they hunched morbidly over a table of gear illuminated by red spotlights and took turns playing each others songs, each seamlessly blended into the next.
The event was hosted by Pitchfork and Sacred Bones Records, the latter of which just released Abandon (Pharmakon’s debut) and No One Dances Quite Like My Brothers (Vår’s first full-length). As such, it was meant to serve as a release party, but toward the end of the set it turned into something a little more like Spa Castle; each member of Vår doused themselves in water and rubbed dirt all over their clean white shirts, faces, arms, each other. When Margaret Chardiet finished performing “Crawling On Bruised Knees” (her quintessential set closer) she joined the boys in literally soiling themselves, then the group played one last song as a filthy whole.
I’ll admit that antics like this make my job as a music writer and observer of musical happenings way, way easier. It also makes Instagrammers blow up Twitter with pictures of Elias Rønnenfelt wearing a blindfold. And that’s probably the goal Pitchfork and Sacred Bones had in mind when staging the whole thing. It’s not that I wasn’t expecting something slightly controversial to occur during the performance after witnessing Vår’s onstage makeouts last summer. But honestly, it would have been better if Vår had just played their record, which is phenomenally beautiful and heavy but has these very strange, ultra-gorgeous pop inflections.
And Pharmakon? This woman does not need gimmicks. Her voice, and her vision as an artist, have made my pulse quicken every single time I’ve had the pleasure of catching her riveting performances. I liked the idea of the two entities collaborating, but I had imagined Chardiet’s signature shrieks over Vår’s dark, atmospheric washes, something new created by the act of playing collaboratively. I almost heard in my head her voice blending with Loke Rahbek’s, or with Rønnenfelt’s, or the three of them singing (or screaming, or whatever) together.
Instead, I was reminded of Johnny Ray Rucker III, a goofball kid I went to art school with. We referred to his girlfriend as Art Boobs because he hung all these naked pictures of her covered in fake blood up in the dorm hallway (it was with her consent; she was a bit unhinged as well). I know art school is a magnet for weirdos, but even among weirdos this kid stood out as weirder then the rest. Once, he announced a noise show he’d be performing by himself in the fluorescently-lit student center. During it, he screamed, he writhed around on the ground, he mauled a perfectly innocent sandwich, and doused himself in chocolate syrup. This is what Pitchfork has reduced Pharmakon and Vår to in my mind, and both are way, way better than that.
So what’s behind the shenanigans? Is social media to blame? Are record labels and blogs and booking agents so desperate to generate buzz that they’ll encourage bands to forgo any emphasis on their music and turn its live iteration into a circus? Should we veteran show-goers be glad that someone is giving us something to comment on, whether those comments are snarky or awed or some mix of both? It’s hard to know for sure, and that’s one of the reasons it’s a weird and wonderful time to be in thick of it. I might have found Vårmakon’s performance piece slightly trite, but I certainly enjoyed scrolling through my friends’ Vine feeds of the lasers over at Grand Prospect Hall.
LES bar Home Sweet Home is like a lot of other NYC venues, and then again, it isn’t. I was reminded of a handful of seedy lounges, kooky galleries, and DIY show spaces, but the reality is that Home Sweet Home takes elements of each and rolls them into something completely immersive. From the moment I showed ID to security outside, I felt I was being led back to parts of myself I’d forgotten, as if through a maze. I felt the way I used to feel about going to shows at Glasslands or 285 before the magic of those places became almost commonplace to me. Maybe I’ve been somewhat jaded about show-going in NYC. Though I live in a city where beautiful and amazing musical events happen every day and am so, so lucky in that regard, it can feel a little rote when it’s something you do constantly. There’s no one identifiable reason Home Sweet Home felt like a breath of fresh air, but there are lots of equally inspiring aspects and moments that awed me over and over.
I had to get a ticket from the box office, located upstairs in the Fig. 19 gallery space acting as offshoot of Envoy Enterprises. Rather than a simple stamp on the hand, the lady in the booth offered me a gorgeous hand-numbered screen-printed ticket specifically designed for the event.
The gallery show was curated by Iceage members and featured an eclectic array of pieces, including zines from Adam Rossiter, drawings and paintings from Screaming Female’s Marissa Paternoster, intricate black and white ink drawings from Genesis Crespo, illustrations from Alexander Heir, the chaotic sketches of Sam Ryser, photos from Nina Hartmann and Cali Dewitt and everything in between, from screen-printed t-shirts to video projections. Though the media was varied, the air and attitude was consistent – one of discontent, alienation, and attraction to decay, all themes that run common to the bands that played downstairs.
It’s a little bit strange, I think, to know you can be soothed by a line-up that includes goth punk, harsh noise, and hardcore. It could be indicative of the mental distress I was in prior to attendance, but even if my headspace was questionable the quality of the performances was not. Dream Affair were first, a Brooklyn-based trio of disaffected kids who look too young to have the kind of post punk and cold wave reference points that clearly inform their music. Their youthful appearance is misleading in that way, because Dream Affair pull off those sounds with unrivaled authenticity, the sound more fleshed out and visceral in a live setting than the somewhat hollow approach on 2011’s Endless Days. Hayden Payne delivers deep-voiced vocals with a healthy dose of sneering vitriol, backed on stoic bass by Bryan Spoltore. But it’s the addition of Abby Echiverri that provides the band’s most compelling sounds; her squalling synths and backup shrieking are essential, but when she pulled out an electric violin it launched Dream Affair into a whole other realm for me.
It took a while for Margaret Chardiet to set up her various pedals, electronic gadgets, and other blinking things with gobs of knobs. But these are the instruments of choice for her Pharmakon project, in which this tiny, unassuming Chloe-Sevigny look-alike with silken blonde locks becomes a feral howling creature possessed by something demonic.
The demons came out before she even started, as technical difficulties proved frustrating; the miked sheet of metal she’d set up wasn’t making the right kind of racket when she hit it with her fist, and eventually she became so enraged that she knocked the entire apparatus over like a petulant child would. It sat inert and forgotten on the stage exactly as it fell for the duration of the performance, which consisted of punishing drone and gut-wrenching screams. Pharmakon is a project that hounds its creator, but also provides catharsis and connection with her audience. It is impossible not to be moved, not to be captivated by Chardiet’s vocal onslaught, but she takes it several steps further by leaping into the audience, cradling random show-goers in her intense gaze, forehead to forehead (including Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, lead singer of Iceage, who looked on intently). She lurches through the crowd, wailing, and it feels thrilling but wholly genuine and free of gimmicks, as if this is just how she always behaves. Recordings from the project are made few and far between and are often released in small editions, making the much sought-after material rare. But that seems appropriate given the raw nature of Pharmakon’s live set, in which her physical presence dominates a room entirely. It’s as though her being becomes a channel for something otherworldly, outside of itself, and that’s something that can only be witnessed as it happens before one’s eyes.
Iceage didn’t waste anytime in setting up and unleashing their brutal, blistering brand of industrial-influenced no-wave. The set opened with “Ecstasy” from the much-anticipated sophomore album You’re Nothing, out on Matador February 19th. If a band like Iceage seems a tad out of place on the label that birthed bands like Cat Power and Yo La Tengo, there are two important things to remember. The first is that Matador’s catalogue is actually pretty diverse (especially in terms of its “alumni”), spanning many a genre, hosting many a genre-defining act. The second thing to remember is that if there’s anything that ties its roster together, it’s that Matador has represented the biggest, best, and brightest acts and are in the business of making them legendary in ways that independent acts rarely enjoy.
While Iceage’s new record sees the band dealing with more interior thoughts and experimenting with some lighter touches, Matador hasn’t turned them into Belle & Sebastian by any means. The searing live performances the band is capable of delivering prove that, and the new material is every bit as ferocious as the old. Rønnenfelt was at his spastic best, model-gorgeous and buttoned up as usual but thrashing, moaning, and tearing electrical wires from the low rafters above his tall frame. The skittering drums, scorched guitars and insistent bass that marked Iceage’s sound on 2011’s prolific New Brigade have carried over to the tracks the band developed for You’re Nothing, and though the band has been touring behind its older material for what seems like eons now their delivery packs every bit as much gusto. In every way, Iceage makes it clear that they’ve taken to heart their role of ushering in a new era of punk rock, even if they seem removed from the hype that surrounds them.
