Shivering; by Octavia M Sheffner
Octavia M Sheffner is an Almaty, Kazakhstan-based producer, writer and visual artist. Their music is a kaleidoscopic collage, hypnotic while perpetually reformatting, longform with a hook focused immediacy. Previous releases have appeared on labels including Suite 309 and Blorpus Editions, alongside a sprawling catalogue of self-released albums and aliases. With 'Shivering;' their new tape on Bezirk, this approach steps into a darker zone without losing the vibrant energy that makes their work so crucial.
The tracks on 'Shivering;' were recorded in November 2022, which contributed to their murkier tone. “For me, November is a cursed month. It has a sour, dour aura to it. A time of transition when the weather won’t make up its mind. I was going through November fever, a sense of uneasiness and unreality. And that’s partly why I made this really melancholy, distant, voidy record,” Octavia explains.
When listening to these tracks, you get sucked into a hypnagogic netherworld. There’s a feeling of descent, but no despair. An acquiescence perhaps, to slipping into the darkness and taking in its trippy scenery. The first track, ‘Eris & Aneris...’ comes from Sheffner recycling an older recording from another project. Propelled by a chugging metallic pulse, snippets of vocals and other sound blend into a blur over the perpetual motion groove. Things deepen on ‘Insomnie a deux’, compiled from a bank of Youtube vinyl rips of everything from church chorals to old folk songs. “Vinyl rips to Youtube have all this annoying high end to them,” Octavia explains. “These clicks that I really can’t stand. I spent so long trying to filter them out, and that’s how the track ended up sounding so washed out.”
Like so much of Octavia M Sheffner’s music, each track acts as a nexus point, an intersection of strands from the online archive somehow wrestled into, if not harmony, a peculiar equilibrium. “I think of the album as being two spiral staircases eating each other, like an ouroboros,” they explain.
The ominous tone is matched in the artwork. Like all the visuals for their releases, it was done by Octavia themselves. Intrinsically tied to the sounds, this time they took inspiration from the heavy negative space found in Daguerreotypes. The power that comes from washes of black. It taps a deep rooted fixation. “The ‘Alone’ episode of Spongebob changed my sensibilities forever,” they explain. “Speech bubbles in the void. It’s psychological horror in a kids cartoon. I love it deeply, it ruined my life. It resonates with this album.”
It's not all darkness though. On the closing track, a gorgeous mesh of overlapping strings underpins a spoken word sample of someone going through the mundane practice of tuning up an instrument. “It’s to bring the record back from the dark world. To lure you back into physicality with recognizable sound or space. Rather than an abstract realm where rainbow lights flash in the dark periodically. “
Bio
Octavia Mobius Sheffner is a co-founder of the Next Year’s Snow net collective. They’ve released music under a host of different aliases and projects, including Korn Serves Imperialism and Oil Torture. Their music is rooted in a practice of digital hoarding, scraping all manner of detritus from the sides of the internet and making something new. Crucial early influences range from the ultra-minimal pop loop of Together’s So Much Love to Give to Boredom’s ‘Vision Creation Newsun,’ and Ground Zero’s ‘Revolutionary Pekinese Opera’. These reference points give a hint as to where Octavia’s music originates, even if the end results are radically different. “I think of what I’m doing as hypothetical free jazz,” they explain. “When I started I wanted to rip off Ground Zero and the Boredoms. But how could I do that if I can’t play an instrument, if I only have a laptop? What I’ve been doing since 2019 is an attempt to solve that problem.”
“It’s about sound interaction. I like having microevents. Micro skirmishes as part of the battle. Individual sounds charging at one another. Both getting impaled by each other’s weapon and becoming one. That’s a clumsy metaphor, but that’s basically it.”
