Text by CLOT Magazine
Oscar Powell, l’enfant terrible of the industrial/noise-techno and one-half of Diagonal Records, is back with a whole new conceptual multimedia project. Powell keeps pushing his sound and creative output because he is known for his tracks that combine the attitude of post-punk with the physicality of techno and the adventurous spirit of experimental music and are surrounded by some of the most forward-thinking artists.
Known as well for his collaborations with Russell Haswell and Wolfgang Tillmans, this time, the experimental producer has teamed up with Swiss filmmaker Michael Amstad, Norwegian visual artist Marte Eknæs, and trans-disciplinary artist Mathias Gmachl.
To launch a ƒolder, new polyphonic outputting organism that contracts, ⊹ expands, inflates, ⊹ deflates. a ƒolder includes the carb⊛nated computer music and compositional work of Oscar Powell and the H!-sensitive film and image work of Michael Amstad and Marte Eknæs (we are leaving the playful typographic characters used across the project).
The platform was established to proliferate more flexible and ✰ spontaneous ✰ modes of expression in various indeterminate formats. every ƒolder [or release] can be seen as a vessel for other things: a place where music, film, image, text ± other actual/virtual ideas are free to diverge/converge → to collect, collide and multiply according to NON-sensical rules ✰ each ƒolder is catalogued and archived non-chronologically.
The project, which saw the public light on 13 May 2020, includes several sections spanning several formats: afolder.studio ↱ the new home of the project where music, film, image and text work are made available, multi-mendy 1-3, recombined ↱ the first H!-sensitive film created by Michael Amstad and Marte Eknæs featuring full 18-minute carb⊛nated composition by Powell, flash across the intervals_lp and multiply the sides_lp ↱ two Powell albums and supercut ↱ a two-minute l!ve demonstration film that shows a ƒolder in full flight ↓ a divergent audio-√isual d✰alogue between all four artists; midi-flex 222 ↱ a 24-minute stochastic composition, new image and text work ± PLUS ± a √irtual entanglement session , aƒ39 ➜ live_assemblage_London_2019 ↯ a 30-minute dual-screen performance spliced together from over 12 hours of recorded film/music ➜ featuring live Notch processing by Mathias Gmachl
The artists say this is only the first phase of a project whose contours will be stretched by a sustained volley of further albums ± films ± image/text editions ⨧ √irtual performances from now until ¿
One may feel a bit disconcerted on the first attempt to navigate this exciting surprise. Still, the seductive nature of images, concepts and sounds feels like a treat to your palate in enjoyable small doses.
