Very pleased to digitally release this set of music and poetry from the polar circles from Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser. ‘we are opposite like that’ is a vast series of interdisciplinary artworks that comprises fictional mythologies for the poles, told from the non-human perspective of an elder that has witnessed deep time: the ice.
The release of ‘we are opposite like that’ nestles itself in the twilight of 2021, year of fires and floods, in mourning and as an attempt to remember the last vestiges of ice on Earth. The first part of the release features an original score for string quartet inspired by field recordings from the Arctic and Antarctic circle. The music recounts the tale of the omnipresent anxiety in Victorian England of an imminent glacial epoch. The disorienting fear of an invasive periphery sent shudders through the colonial enterprise, the tremors of which can be felt in contemporary times.
The 2nd part of the release, ‘Subcontinentment’, is a manifesto that posits a South Asian Futurism, anti-chronicling the geopoetic links between the poles and the Indian subcontinent. The extra-terrestrial echoes of stones skimming on frozen lakes sound like firecrackers, blackening the air. The soundscape is set against the image of an alien figure from the equator traversing the blank, oblivious whiteness, slowly transforming into glimmering ice.
The album will be released later this year on vinyl, and will include a limited edition print comprising imagery and poetry from the visual ‘we are opposite like that’.
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Mastered by Oli Barrett