Opaque – Duvetica Diadema Princess

This year I participated in the Staticism tape swap, along with other such excellent artists as Cannibal Ritual, Bruising Pattern, She Walks Crooked and more. My entry was for October. The result was Duvetica Diadema Princess: a two-tape set housed in a double library case. The cassettes themselves are a marble lilac, with the four respective sides – Duvetica, Diadema, Princess and 〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰 – each coming in at 15 minutes sharp.

Duvetica Diadema Princess is a tribute to Duvetica’s 2019 Diadema jacket, a down jacket that comes in 6 colours: black, white, pink, lime yuzu, light grey and dark blue, although their availability has differed regionally (incidentally, for 2020 a plum version seems to have been added, which has the Duvetica patch on the left arm rather than on the chest; additional note added 20/10/2020: the fabric in the 2020 black version seems slightly more matte, as far as I can judge from the pictures on various webshops, such as here, which would mean that the 2019 version is clearly superior! Also, the yellow is now sunbeam yellow and tends more towards orange than the lime yuzu, which leaned more towards green). The three variants I find the most amazing, the black, pink and lime yuzu, are in my collection. They are without doubt some of the finest down jackets ever designed, finally putting Duvetica – whose previous collections I found generally unremarkable – up there with the likes of Moncler. Interestingly, of course, Duvetica was founded by two former Moncler employees, Giampiero Vagliano and Stefano Rovoletto, who initially launched the brand exclusively for the Japanese market before they expanded to the rest of the world. Still, the brand’s ubiquituous presence in South-East Asia surpasses its general popularity elsewhere, as evidenced by its recent popularity in South-Korea, with its jackets gracing the shoulders of numerous social media-ites and those of actors and actresses in TV shows and at public events.

Four tributes to the Diadema jacket were released prior to this double tape, each consisting of two tracks of 8 minutes each and dedicated respectively to the black version (Duvetica Diadema), the lime yuzu (Duvetica Diadema (Colour Variation 1: ▢)), the pink (Duvetica Diadema (Colour Variation 2: ▢)) and the white (Duvetica Diadema (Colour Variation 3: ▢)). These were only released digitally for now, but will likely see physical versions in the near-future.

Duvetica Diadema Princess was released in an edition of 12, one each for the participants in the 2020 Staticism tape swap. Each tape was accompanied by a Moncler Opaque patch and shipped in a matte pink/purple bubble envelope to the participants. A thirteenth copy of this tape, in a special edition, was sent to a close contact. The 〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰 used both in the artwork and for the track title of the closing track, incidentally, is a small tribute to one of the most excellent down jacket accounts on Instagram, @jacketpablo. It was the direct or indirect source for several images used across the different Diadema releases.

Duvetica Diadema Princess is not available online as of yet, but may be in the future. Of course, most other Opaque releases (including the other Diadema releases) can be streamed or purchased on the Bandcamp here.

From the archives: horsing – Yukiko Okada (2008)

Although my first singularly wall venture was to be Panic, the first proper wall I ever recorded (outside of some experiments with static a few years earlier that had happened from a different point of departure entirely) was the track that would end up on the 4-way split Four On The Floor, released through Cantankerous Records from Australia and also featuring contributions by The Shock Technician, PPP and Dotåbåtå. Originally recorded in 2008, the 4-way split would not see the light of day until 2012, by which time the horsing moniker had been mostly retired (that year saw the last release under the moniker, a split with fellow Dutch HN/HNW act TRAITORS).

Yukiko Okada was named for a Japanese idol and singer who tragically committed suicide in 1986. She had served as an inspiration before, lending both the title as well as a sample to the track Little Princess / If There Was A Magic To Forget You off the horsing split tape with Zebra Mu. While that track was a mixture of found sounds and phone-recorded screechy harsh noise, an experimental approach firmly in line with the general horsing approach, Yukiko Okada was a true wall and was the track that gave way to my first all-wall project, Panic, as well as my first (and shortly-lived) all-wall label, Plague Records.

Four On The Floor is comprised of four bizcard CDrs that come in a cassette case, each individually in a pink slipcase, with a J-card and two inserts. The bizcards are stamped with the initials of each project and Roman numerals IV. The lay-out and design was courtesy of Carey Knight, half of the crew running Cantankerous Records (along with Kyle Dennis, producing harsh noise under the Fuck, The Retarded Girl moniker) and the man behind Dotåbåtå. The picture below gives an overview of the release’s aesthetics, showing its J-card, inserts and the horsing bizcard.

I collaborated quite a bit with Carey for a while, doing releases on each other’s labels and a split, among other things. Eventually we lost touch; by the time this release saw the light of the day we were no longer in contact. I eventually picked up the release myself through Discogs. It’s a very cool release that, just like everything else that was done on Cantankerous at the time, had a distinct aesthetic and a lot of care put into it.

The track itself can be listened to on the horsing Bandcamp right here: Yukiko Okada.

Absent Erratum: ░N░E░W░ – Painting Of Common Objects

░N░E░W░ 🖼️ Painting Of Common Objects is the 41st release on Absent Erratum. This submission features three tracks at a total of 61 minutes and 20 seconds. It was released on October 7th, 2020.

A blank canvas offers its bare wrists, ready for the scratching, the scraping, the slitting; Absent Erratum draws forth from them a ruby red stream – an act of violence, an act of love. She runs the stream off a surface void of features, where slowly, gradually, a portrait emerges. The unfamiliar turns familiar, the absence turns into a presence; subjects and objects are projected onto each other – abstraction is a history, its lineage unknown.

You can listen to Painting Of Common Objects here.

New Absent Erratum: Oracle Sunset – Transmigration

Oracle Sunset 🌅 Transmigration is the 40th release on Absent Erratum. This anonymous submission features a total of 1 eponymous track of 20 minutes and 19 seconds. It was released on October 2nd, 2020.

Particles of darkness descend upon the soil as night falls ; the exterior retreats into the interior, where it is illuminated and inspected, its fragile composition dismantled, then mended – its unspoken language first heard; its unwritten orthography first read; its syntax untangled and coiled around the light. Amidst the weightless threads of speech and sound, Absent Erratum searches, rummaging around in the words that are formed as she touches them. Their meanings stay hidden; their shapes are obscure; and so she traces the filaments and fibers out into the gloom, where a stray glimmer rests on the leaves and branches. It disappears into her hands, a requiem for a vocabulary already forgotten.

You can listen to Transmigration here.