529

Celebrating 15 years of 529 EAV. Full lineup TBA

Devour marks the fourth full-length record from New York City based artist Margaret
Chardiet’s project Pharmakon and the most intense output of her 12 plus years
creating industrial noise. Like her previous albums, Devour comes with a strong concept
that is exorcised throughout the five demolishing tracks on the album, using imagery
and language of self-cannibalism as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans.
Each of the five songs echoes a stage of grief associated with this cyclical chamber of
self-destruction and the chaos surrounding us that leads us to devour ourselves in an
attempt to balance the agony.

The album was recorded by Ben Greenberg (Uniform) and is the first Pharmakon
album recorded live in studio. The A and B sides were each recorded as a continuous
take with vocals from start to finish, marking a totally new process for the artist that
allows the ferocity and immediacy of her live performance to resonate throughout.
Devour also explores new sonic territory, with denser electronics, groovier hooks, and
moments of her most unhinged vocal deliveries to date. As one of the premiere
vanguards of modern industrial and power electronics, Chardiet continuously pushes
the genres and everyone involved in them, and with the release of Devour, she has
once again changed the game.

Artist Statement:
“Devour” uses self-cannibalization as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans;
on cellular, individual, societal and species-wide scales. In our cells, our minds, our
politics and our species, humans are self-destructing. But this behavior does not
happen in a vacuum. It is an instinctive inward response to a world of increasing
outward violence, greed, and oppression. Turning these wounds toward ourselves can
be seen as an attempt at “balancing feedback”, within a never-ending positive feedback
loop of cause and effect. With this view, the blame is placed not within the individual,
but with the world they must contend with, and a society that is designed to fail them – to
keep them gnashing and wailing, inflicted with an all-devouring hunger that inevitably
turns in on the self. Those that pit them against each other grin from the sidelines,
bellies full. Those who see beyond the veil need to obscure the horrid sight by any
means necessary, but respite is always brief- nothing can dampen the glare from
behind the veil. This album is dedicated to all who were lost to their own demise, all who
have been institutionalized; whether in prison, psychiatric facilities, or drug
rehabilitation. It is for all those ostracized by and isolated from a totality which chews
them up alive in a self-cannibalizing caste system. Here, where martyrs, slaves, and
pharmakos are not eradicated, but simply called by another name. “ABOUT THE
SHALLOWNESS OF SANITY”… To be well adjusted in this system is to be oblivious
and unfeeling. This is for the rest of us, who understand that chaos, madness, pain and
even self-destruction are natural and inevitable responses to an unjust and disgusting
world of our own making.

LOCAL NOISE PUNK ROCK

DJ