Depending on the song, this may be the muslin-like textures of the ectoplasm of Victorian mediums, iridescent bubbles dancing past the dada architectures of a pacific reef, or the chalk-scribbled formula for organic compounds which always come to our minds whenever we think of those daring sonic explorers toggling with unstable radio-phonic apparatus deep in the vaults of the BBC.
All of these scenarios are Hauntological obsessions that 20JFG shares.
Their gestalt is soft-edged and blurry, their shape was assembled with arcane techniques and technologies sufficiently obsolete to be indistinguishable from legend.
They arrive from a dead world, transforming their creators – here, Karen Sharkey and Samuel de La Rosa – into vehicles for a possession, and their users – us and also you – into necromancers à la Joseph Curwen.
These séance-like attributes of the moment that starts when we press play contribute to its eeriness. That and the thematic obsession of this dead universe we are tearing into with the paranormal and the occult, with the unpredictable implications of scientific experiments where you travel far away and come back, accompanied by a strange shadow.
Which is what we just did, oops.
All these impressions and hidden forces lurk under the surface of Tierra Amarilla, the song that we are posting today. The macabre is however overwhelmed, in this case, by an aura of gossamer beauty, strange like the violations of gravity & refractions of light that occur underwater, made stranger by their use to describe New Mexican valleys (the Yellow Land), like those from which according to alternative folklore, the Ancient People (Anasazi) sailed into the constellations, never to be seen again.
Do purchase the EP here. Go here to watch more short films by Karen Sharkey, like this wonderful oddity sound-tracked by Samuel.