The term "pharmakos" later became the term "pharmakeus" which refers to "a drug, spell-giving potion, druggist, poisoner, by extension a magician or a sorcerer." A variation of this term is "pharmakon" (φάρμακον) a complex term meaning sacrament, remedy, poison, talisman, cosmetic, perfume or intoxicant. From this, the modern term "pharmacology" emerged.
(From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakos)
Thus far, my choice for best album of 2013 is Abandon by Pharmakon, a noise project by someone named Margaret who I think lives in New York City. I've seen Pharmakon perform twice, once at the good old Germ Books shop that used to be on Frankford Ave. (I loved that place.) But I don't really remember that performance very well... Then earlier this year I saw her at Kung Fu Neck Tie. That was very memorable, and one of the best shows I've seen in a while, although I wish I'd worn ear plugs.
The experience of the show was to be part of a group of people, mostly men, standing in a circle in a darkish room around a table on which there are some kind of machines. And there is a smallish feminine humanoid pressing buttons on the machine and apparently screaming into a microphone but the screams are only echos heard on the background of a larger rumble so deep that it shakes your being. Not much happens other than she paces back and forth somewhat hunched over screaming something indecipherable and handling the controls on the machine. But it was still really intense to witness, to feel.
The live show can't be duplicated. If you watch a YouTube video of it I'd say you are missing ninety-nine percent of the experience. This new record Abandon takes you closer, but it is much more polished and a different sound entirely. I haven't heard previous Pharmakon recordings as they have mostly received limited release from small labels. Last Thursday I was down at AKA Records on 2nd Street and there was Abandon for sale on CD, so I bought it without hesitation. I've probably listened to it almost ten times since then, but it's difficult to explain my fascination.
The record opens with a scream that morphs into a high pitched multi-toned droning ring. There are some vocals, screamed and distorted. They are more recognizable than you hear at a live performance, but you still have to follow along with the lyrics in the booklet to understand them. There are four tracks, each ranging from six to seven minutes long. Then there are blank tracks from number 5 to 98, each six seconds long. Track 99 is twenty-seven minutes long. This track distribution somewhat reminds me of certain editions of the Broken EP by Nine Inch Nails, from back in the 1990s, which was a very good industrial album. I wonder if it's a nod. To me Pharmakon emits a similar energy to early NIN, but updated for our times.
I don't really want to go into describing how the noise variates throughout the album, or make comparisons to other projects. I will say that in a few tracks I detect a distinct rhythm and melody which I've find to be uncharacteristic of most Power Electronics. It makes them almost song-ish, in a real "song" kind of way.
Noise is a weird sort of genre to collect and in particular industrial or post-industrial noise, which I would liken to the horror genre in film. The idea is to be uncomfortable, profoundly uncomfortable. I remember when I first started getting into collecting this, back in 2008, I got very enthusiastic and wanted to share my findings with other people, but upon trying to play them a sample or two it was difficult to convey the reasons for why it is worthwhile. The best way to listen is alone. For this reason, what I take from the genre is the theme of alienation. You confront yourself when playing a noise CD. If you allow yourself to sit through whole songs and actively listen to them you are forced into introspection. The live experience also tends to be alienating. Communication is futile. This isn't really party music. It's meditation music.
What I find interesting about collecting this genre of marginalization is the paradigm shift that develops when it becomes a regular part of your life. I remember those first few years of being an industrial noise fan and suddenly feeling that there were more and more aspects of noise influencing our culture, that noise was on the up and up. Maybe it is, but I now wonder how much of this sentiment comes from having it on my radar. That is to say, because this is something I like, now I hear more about it, mainly because I'm paying attention, but nothing else has changed.
I've noticed this is true in general, in how people think. When you form an opinion about a subject, or start to care about it, then you are more sensitive to where and when the subject fits into whatever information you encounter on a regular basis. This generates sympathy for that opinion. Perhaps it creates a bias.
Recently, in a conversation with a friend, he commented that the perception that things are getting worse in society is largely due to one's fixation on negativity and an increase in the availability of information to verify such a viewpoint. So if you come to the opinion that a negative trend is growing in society, you will start to become more aware of evidence to verify this while perhaps blocking out other contradicting factors. It's an intriguing idea and when I first heard it, I thought the point was that society is not changing all that much, or that people aren't acting all that differently. But I can't agree with that.
Perhaps the point is to ask what is getting better, focus on that, and stop complaining. I can't do that either. I'm a natural born complainer. But for the sake of argument, let's take the terms "worse" and "better" out of the parameters. Let's instead ask, is society growing or dying? Is society more stable or less? Are communities in our society generally stronger than in the past, or more broken? Are individuals better socially acclimated or worse? These are pretty subjective questions, and we are really only limited to our own life experiences to verify them with accuracy, and even our life experiences taint our objectivity.
I like to look for historical evidences. I tend to look at forms of collective power like censorship and taboo, which change over generations. So for instance, early Hollywood had the Motion Picture Production Code which banned showing certain lascivious, lewd, or violent behaviors. But this was abandoned in the 1960s, as the movie rating system formed to allow for previously forbidden things to be accessible to adults. They were only movies after all. At the same time, behaviors prohibited by the code have been replaced by ideas prohibited by the establishment, academia, and the media. I don't think I need to give an example. Just think of something that would never be in a mainstream movie now but would have in the days of the old code. If you make a list of these these you would have a good idea of the new movie code.
Values have changed. I question the new values. But there seem to be many who like the new way. Perhaps they see it as the antidote, what I see as the poison. The Wikipedia quote at the beginning of this blog post discusses the word pharmakon and it's root pharmakos, and demonstrates that the definition encompasses both poison and antidote, that which changes or makes different, bodily or mentally. Enter "pharmakon" into Google Translate and you get "drugs." Better or worse, it could be one or the other. It could be both at the same time. This reminds me of a passage from Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose when Brother William asks the herbalist Severinus if he keeps poison in the infirmary. He responds:
"Among the other things. But that depends on what you mean by poison. There are substances that in small doses are healthful and in excessive doses cause death. Like every good herbalist I keep them, and I use them with discretion."
I listen to Abandon by Pharmakon and think about how our solution can become our problem.
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