Funerealism (CD)
Hand-stamped 5" CD-r. Art printed on heavy card stock and enclosed in a vinyl pouch with a flap. Hand-numbered.
Released 11th November 2022 on Inner Demons Records
The original vision for Funerealism was one hour-long track, a continual sixty minutes of sound that the listener could drift in and out of. I had been experimenting with these hour-long compositions, with varying degrees of success, across the previous six months or so, seeing how far one idea could be stretched.
I must have stretched too far… for reasons how forgotten, the hour got reduced down to forty-seven minutes; still one continuous piece, but not quite enough heft to filibuster through the hour. And it sat like that for a while, gestating, until suddenly, almost organically, the embryo split into four unequal parts.
Within the act of composition, perhaps the act of any artistic creation, the artist only has so much control. The piece itself feels alive, autonomous, pulling its creator into directions, ideas and suggestions that we don’t fully understand, aren’t fully aware of at the time. Do any of us truly know where all our ideas come from? And wherever that is, once removed from its original birthplace, does an idea then stay the same?
Perversely, the process of creation – the birth, the formation, and ultimately the execution – became the driving theme behind Funerealism. As Beckett writes in Waiting For Godot, "They give birth astride of a grave." Any idea or concept of life therefore must also contain the seed for conceptualising death, for the two are simply inseparable. In the execution and realisation of idea, bringing it to life, we are ultimately killing the idea. The idea is dead. Its palpable corporeality now lives.
We all die a thousand dies before we meet the true end. The idea of who we could be, of who we were, the possibilities and alternatives, stand myriad against our present-day absolute. We are shifting. We contain multitudes (à la Whitman). Living is not permeable, not concrete.
This is funerealism.
"Seriously impressive stuff, with multi-layered sounds that are perfect for losing yourself in." - This Is Darkness
"This sounds great... a single well thought out jewel of a release." - 1208 North Fuller Ave Apt 1