hiraeth

Pre-Order: Cassette expected to ship within 2 weeks of 23 January

Via ek verlag, the imprint curated by Himukalt:

pms
by hiraeth

hiraeth is the work of sarah košicki, a german noise artist who works with her own sadness, her displacement in her body, and her own conundrum of existence. i can relate. she has worked with kim / smr.tni and i first heard her through a tape on silken heart that was dripping with dark ambient melancholy devoid of anything romantic. it felt vacant. bleak. on this album for ek verlag, the noise is much more abrasive and more psychically violent. it's dirty and wet. it's exhibitionist and menstrual. it's exposed, innocent, debased all at once. the first sound she utters something of a song. sort of a tuneless melody she might sing to herself, to no one, as a daydream. a time and place that was never real. all of this crumbles into noise through her dysphoria, her hormonal misery, her eternal homesickness for something that never was. maybe that's a good definition for me to understand what hiraeth means, a welsh word adjacent to the german sehnsucht. she recorded herself crying to the sound of a radio. she recorded herself masturbating, coming sooner than normal knowing her audience is listening. she once pissed on stage, and found her libido returned, sparking her exhibitionist tendencies. she speaks of her hormonal cycles as sometimes fighting against her own agency. i hear all of this and more. sonically, i hear spk, master/slave relationship, maria zerfall, chrystal belle scrodd, and reverend kristin michael hayter. it's all there. vulnerable and raw. uncomfortably real, shattered, and broken.

mastered by grant richardson