![]() These tracks flow elegantly into one another, and the attention to dynamics and tension allows for seamless listening. That Devour is such a tiring album is a testament to its cohesiveness. That same powerlessness becomes the only thing felt on the album closer, "Pristine Panic / Cheek By Jowl." In the track's final minutes, her voice fades away, and all that's left is blaring, discordant noise. The song's crawling pace underpins a sense of fatigue, and Chardiet's voice feels less like a set of vigorous attempts at overcoming pain than continued cries of desperation. The shrill, droning noise that surrounds it eases listeners into the intensity of her caustic power electronics.Īt the beginning of "Deprivation," a warbling synth plays, then makes way for a brooding beat. By the time "Spit It Out" begins, the beat's transformed into a looser groove. Its mechanistic strikes portray unceasing pain, and Chardiet's warped shrieking acts as the expected response to such overwhelming stimuli. On the opener, "Homeostasis," a continuous three-beat thud represents the oppressive forces that people face regularly. Devour is concerned once again with life's frailty, but Chardiet seems intent on pushing people beyond simple recognition of it: she wants people to accept the smallness of their existence, and she drags listeners along these five tracks until they get to that point. Contact, meanwhile, posited the mind's capacity to transcend despite the body's deficiencies. With Bestial Burden, Chardiet asked listeners to consider how the mind is shackled to a body that's prone to failure. ![]() ![]() Chardiet wants you to reckon with the fragility of human flesh and society, and how self-destruction is a natural response to a world filled with misery. Given the underlying conceit here is to present what Chardiet calls "the self-destructive nature of humans on cellular, individual, societal and species-wide scales," the experience of hearing Devour is defined by incredible exhaustion. Largely responsible for this is how its A and B sides were recorded as continuous takes, effectively translating the unyielding severity of her live performances to the LP format. But none of her previous albums hit as hard as her newest, Devour. Margaret Chardiet's work as Pharmakon has always been confrontational. ![]()
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