Contact cover

Contact

Released

Pharmakon’s 2014 album Bestial Burden was inspired by a sudden, life-threatening medical emergency and the resulting feeling of vulnerability and physical helplessness. This album is its flipside, an attempt to reconnect with the world, from its cover art depicting Margaret Chardiet’s face framed and caressed by many greasy-looking hands to its junkyard postpunk clang and clatter (“No Natural Order”) and pulsing electronic rhythms (“Transmission”), over which she howls, gasps, and cries out. Electronic noise music can be alienating, a deliberate attempt to shove the listener away, but for all the harshness of her tracks, Chardiet offers an embrace; she wants to pull you in.

Phil Freeman

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