AGENESIS by Robert Curgenven

Available also via the Cloudchamber Bandcamp https://cloud-chamber.bandcamp.com/album/agenesis

The sharp staccato of a cicada, stuck in a tropical stairwell, throwing its body against a fluorescent light – it keeps trying to force a solution despite it clearly not working.

The submerged melodies of an 84year old acetate echo the reflection in the play-of-light which inspired its name. A Benedictine monastery’s pipe organ in Ireland’s west sounds with and against those of a Cathedral organ pipes’ contrasting intonation at St Fin Barre’s in Ireland’s south.

Voices laugh in backstreets discretely lined by Pachinko machines, the quiet clatter of small vehicles, aged bicycles – these relative, but disturbed, stillnesses recorded between the brief bursts of broken cables.

Striated tones flicker and pierce these seemingly languid scenes, underscored by the rattle of walls, by bass re-recorded in an empty art gallery via Funktion One subs – together these disparate sounds create a physical presence, like an entity, something that can be felt moving on its own in the room.

AGENESIS (noun) - a partial or complete absence.

From flitting fragments of an unrevealed whole, AGENESIS is a statement where you don’t have all the information – somehow both complete and incomplete - its totality remains obscured and if it is a statement it remains unstated, a statement about incompleteness, withholding.

AGENESIS is a new addition to Robert Curgenven's respectable oeuvre - at first subwoofers' strike, it may very well seem like a departure from his previous elegiac pipe organ work, subtle interplays of room feedback with dubplates and turntables through to field recordings from remote areas, however this album brings some of Curgenven's seminal influences back into focus - 90s grindcore, bass-heavy electronics and techno, 20th Century orchestral works. Rather than a departure, AGENESIS presents a true consolidation of these influences. The album seeks to play a game of contrasts, pushing the listener to adjust his cognitive exposure between these unstable scenes described above and a tectonic sub bass at the core creating a total seismic event.

Growing out of an evolving live sound & light concert set from 2015 to 2021 while living in Ireland in Cork city and Connemara off the west coast, this album version attempts to translate into a stereo experience the polyrhythmic phasing in light and sound that the live set, with his partner Kat McDowall, aimed to produce - a collapse in depth perception to bring the collective bodies of the audience and the surrounding room into a physical constellation of head-wrecking quasi-synaesthesia. The live set’s 1:1 relationship between the sound driving the light via custom-made lighting/DMX software draws from Edwin Land's work with light shadows following his invention of Polaroid photography and sunglasses, themselves processes which eliminate to allow us to see differently, a new whole from a partial or complete absence.

Tracklist

1.	_GENESIS	4:06

2.	A_ENESIS	3:12

3.	AG_NESIS	2:01

4.	AGE_ESIS	1:57

5.	AGEN_SIS	6:28

6.	AGENE_IS	6:47

7.	AGENES_S	4:33

8.	AGENESI_	7:16

Credits

released October 18, 2024

Electronics, no-input mixing desk, dubplates and acetates recorded in Cork & Connemara (Ireland) 2015-2021

Pipe organs recorded at St Fin Barre's Cathedral (Cork) 2018 and Kylemore Abbey (Connemara) 2019

Field recordings: Katherine (Northern Territory, Australia, 2005) and Akihabara (Tokyo, Japan, 2006)

Bass on tracks 1-4 re-recorded through Funktion One soundsystem at Państwowa Galeria Sztuki, Sopot, Poland, thanks to Łukasz Zygarlicki & Sound Support Pro (2019)

Supported by Agility Award (Arts Council of Ireland) 2021
Remixed in Australia (Brisbane) 2024
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu, Schwebung Mastering, 2024
Cloudchamber Recordings Edition #CC50 | MMXXIV

REVIEWS:
"imposing sub bass pressure displaces Curgenven's ... sonic explorations into spaces more attuned to club deconstructions, while also gesturing at his early twin loves of grindcore and 20th century orchestral works … the early tracks pair throbbing sub bass with discordant drones, while later field recordings flow over and under the bass and discords, only to be replaced with snarling electronics, and all that sturm und drang is felt in its absence in track 6's organ drones. There's a wealth of detail across all tracks, and the gradual contrasts draw the listener's ear to different elements each time you listen." - Peter Hollo, Utility Fog, FBi Radio (AUS)

"flickering tones and disparate sounds create a presence, felt in the room" - Headphone Commute (USA)

"fans of this newsletter will likely already know that I’m obsessed with the idea of the drone as a connective tissue between traditional music and contemporary experimentation, and between cultures across the globe... Few in Ireland exemplify this idea quite like Curgenven, so stick your headphones on and sink deep into these fat tectonic frequencies." - Eoin Murray, Anois os Ard - New Irish Music October 2024

"Wide-frequency, muscular drones and spatialized feedback, drawing on no-input mixing, pipe organs, and field-recordings, developed over the last decade of live performances" - A Closer Listen (USA/Canada)

"a sonic palimpsest - a layered architecture of sound that, in both concept and execution, invites listeners into its fragmented, incomplete whole... AGENESIS feels like a fractured mosaic, an album that doesn’t simply confront sound but interrogates space, absence, and memory. Curgenven ventures into disorientation with AGENESIS through a meticulously curated array of sounds and influences. The album’s composition feels akin to an abstract painting - one where each track’s title is stripped down to single letters, echoing the album’s very title, AGENESIS, suggesting an absence or a gradual coming-into-being. Tracks like _GENESIS and A_ENESIS serve as sonic sketches, evolving gradually with rattling sub-bass" - Vito Camarretta, ChainDLK (Italy)

"a hard album, whose dark-edged resonance generates chilling sound waves that reverberate in our bodies and surroundings."- Loop Magazine (Chile)

"...while at times it sounds like odd choices he makes, creating a slightly unhinged album, shooting all over the place, but also showing the many sides of this musician." Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly (NL)

"Expertly put together, precise as always, with extra grit and noise. Pure tones." - Declan Synnott, Substack & Sources of Uncertainty (Dublin Digital Radio)

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