Text by CLOT Magazine
Alien Jams, the record label run by Chloe Frieda exploring sounds across leftfield electronics, industrial, electro, EBM and noise, is launching Kepla’s debut full-length -and his first release for the label-with a night of dark experimental and noise at New River Studios in North East London.
We’ve featured Kepla’s work with DeForrest Brown Jr priorly. Together they’ve put the acclaimed and incisive Absent Personae (PTP), the mixtape The Wages of Being Black Is Death and the more performance-oriented Substantia Nigra, all works that reflect on topics of race and the struggles to fit in contemporary art scenes.
Now Kepla is launching his debut full-length, Within The Gaze, A Shadhavar, an album as of two contrasting approaches to collage-making. Derived entirely from field recordings and salvaged audio collected from online sample libraries, Within The Gaze, A Shadhavar is described as an impressionistic statement inspired by narratives of alienation and ruin. The title itself refers to the mythical creature Shadhavar, “whose horn of hollow branches sounded sweetness or discord depending on the direction of the wind.” The album’s two long-form pieces as a whole represent an astute aural meditation on perception, reality and our sense of belonging.
Kepla will be joined by legend post-punk scene figure Cindytalk, currently exploring improvisation and computer composition, and Ruppert Cleveaux, a respected and well-known musician, audio engineer and writer in the London scene and noise quartet The Begotten.
