It’s no secret that, here at SonicAbuse, we admire bands who run against current trends and present their work as a contiguous piece, rejecting the notion of conveniently parcelling up music for streaming services in the process. Pharmakon’s devour is one such effort. Released on vinyl (as well as CD and digital formats), devour is designed to be heard as two contiguous sides (three tracks on the A side and two on the B) and was recorded live in the studio by Uniform’s Ben Greenberg. Pharmakon, a project created by Margaret Chardiet, uses the “imagery and language of self-cannibalism as allegory for the self destructive nature of humans”, delivered via dense banks of juddering electronics, the results reminiscent of the work of Jarboe, Lydia Lunch and Mike Patton. It is not an easy listen, although the density of the compositions repays those brave enough to return, and it should be approached with similar caution to the likes of Skullflower and Khanate.
Side A (divided up into the tracks homeostasis, spit it out and self-regulating system) opens on the most harrowing of notes as the dark resonance of a bass synth stabs into the darkness. Despite the ferocious music, nothing can prepare the listener for the mutated vocals which, awash with distortion and reverb, emerge from the noise to harangue the listener with barely-decipherable exhortations. Agitated and unnerving, layers of white noise and piercing feedback drag the music into the unholy world of Swans and throbbing gristle and the overall impact is like nothing listeners will have experienced before. Not entirely impenetrable, thanks to a tempo that allows a certain sanguine groove to rise from the murk, this is still tough, hard music and it leaves the listener drained and unnerved.
Slithering into more violent territory, the throbbing bass gives way to airier waveforms that rise and fall like the machinery built into an iron lung. Margaret’s vocals are delivered via an inhuman gargle that twists and burns in the searing tailwind of the music, impossible to ignore and drenched in intense disgust, tearing at the listener with scaly talons that rend flesh from bone. It finally lapses as mechanistic noise evokes a dilapidated factory, the mechanical noise producing a strangely addictive rhythm that brings the first side to a close.
If the first side proved harsh, the second side offers no respite. Comprised of two tracks (deprivation and pristine panic _ cheek by jowel), the opening barrage of noise creeps up on the listener in a manner that recalls the Silent Hill-esque horror of Axis of Perdition – the wheezing synths underpinning Margaret’s increasingly scabrous vocals as we’re taken on a scab-kneed trawl of humanity’s worst impulses. Once again, howls of tormented feedback scar the surface of the track, the rhythmic pulse devolving into the sound of a thousand circuits imploding as one as voltage courses and sparks along their corroded pathways. The latter part of Side B edges into territory hitherto occupied by early Sonic Youth (think the Sonic Death record), as lost howls drift in and out of the noise. Offering little that is recognisably musical, Margaret focuses on creating a mood of extreme discomfort as she marshals the instrumentation into one last mechanical cacophony before allowing the record to spin to a halt.
Few people will be willing to tolerate the unearthly dissonance of Pharmakon and you get the impression that that is at least part of the creator’s intention. This is not easy music, but rather the natural successor to J.G. Ballard’s assertion that he wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit to force it to look in the mirror. Disgusting and disgusted, it takes a strong constitution to confront the rampant hatred that lies at the heart of the piece. For those brave enough to undertake the journey, there is much to recommend, but it is as much an endurance test as it is an experience. As such, any rating system becomes purely arbitrary so anywhere between 1 – 10 (depending on your perspective).
