There was a space in Kim Gordon’s No Home Record. It might not have been a
home and it might not have been a record, but I seem to recall there was a space.
Boulevards, bedrooms, instruments were played, recorded, the voice and its
utterances, straining a way through the rhythms and the chords, threaded in some
shared place, we met there, the guitar came too, there fell a peal of cymbals, driving
on the music. We listened, we turned our back to the walls, slithered through the city
at night. Kim Gordon’s words in our ears, her eyes, she saw, she knew, she
remembered, she liked. We were moving somewhere. No home record. Moving.
Now I’m listening to The Collective. And I’m thinking, what has been done to this
space, how has she treated it, it’s not here the same way, not quite. I mean, not at
all. On this evidence, it splintered, glittered, crashed and burned. It’s dark here. Can I
love you with my eyes open? “It’s Dark Inside.” Haunted by synthesized voices
bodiless. Planes of projections. Mirrors get your gun and the echo of a well-known
tune, comes in liminal, yet never not hanging around, part of the atmosphere, fading
in and out, like she says – Grinding at the edges. Grinding at us all, grinding us away.
Hurting, scraping. Sediments, layers, of recorded emissions, mined, twisted,
refracted. That makes the music. This shimmering, airless geology, agitated,
quarried, cries made in data, bounced down underground tunnels, reaching our ears.
We recalled it – but not as a memory, more like how you recall a product, when it’s
flawed.
She sings “Shelf Warmer” so it sounds like shelf life, it sounds radioactive, inside our
relationships, juddering, the beats chattering, edgy, the pain of love in the gift shop,
assembled in hollow booms, in scratching claps. Non-reciprocal gift giving, there is a
return policy. But – novel idea – A hand and a kiss. How about that. Disruption.
I would say that Kim Gordon is thinking about how thinking is, now. Conceptual
artists do that, did that. “I Don’t Miss My Mind.” The record opens with a list, but the list
is under the title “BYE BYE.” The list says milk thistle, dog sitter…. And much more.
She’s leaving. Why is the list anxious? How divisive is mascara? It’s on the list. I am
packing, listening to the list. Is it mine, or hers.
She began seeking images from behind her closed eyes. Putting them to music. But
I need to keep my eyes open as I walk the streets, with noise cancelled by the
airbuds rammed in my ears. quiet, aware, quiet, aware, they chant at me. What
could be going through Kim’s head as she goes through mine?
Written by English artist Josephine Pryde
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