Mamiffer, Māra

Hysterical Parthenogenetic

“Solitary Conception: “Alone she conceived and gave birth.” ….Knowledge is the transgression: “The transgressor is knowledgeable, the man of knowledge transgresses: to go over the boundary, he turns the cultural space inside out like the finger of a glove, it is still the same space that remains mythical” ( Michel Serres, Hermés ou la Communication, Dictionnaire). Michael Serres marks here the return of knowledge to reality; because in fact the “knowledge” Michael talks about is completely mythical, for him the idea of science is romantic.  It is the same game when Lacan speaks of the relationship of the hysteric and “knowledge”; the “knowledge” of the master, whether he be the father of the family or the university professor: “the hysteric is the divided subject, in other words the unconscious in practice, who puts the master up against a wall to produce a knowledge.” In the circus of transference it is easy to speak of the hysteric’s “challenge,” the master’s “defeat,” of the pathetic figure of the academic who reproduces the master.  It all takes place in the hysteric’s imaginary room, transformed into an amphitheater….I prefer to say that the hysteric, following where the sorceress leads, is split between man and woman, between the two figures of her bisexuality.  She is between the family walls, which she does not leave, and a Jeune Naissance (a New Young Birth), the I-nnascence that is not yet accomplished.” -Hélén Cixous and Catherine Clément- “The Newly Born Woman”

Past Mamiffer text

While writing the new Mamiffer texts for the upcoming 2019 record, I came across The World Unseen one-sheet info written by Brian Cook. First quote by Hélén Cixous

“If you must have a language, let it be one whose quantity cannot be reduced to a single sound, one that moves without displacing, that describes without being written, that knows the letter and yet is the spirit and has the spirit to be without recourse to visibility, that is made of time and not altered by time, that knows neither childhood or age, neither the tongues or the teeth that gnaw at foreign languages, that gives birth to itself, whose soul is everywhere and nowhere, that is free in its coupling. Air cut out of air… a motive force of infinity… and the world will be music… where birth and death overlap.” -Hélén Cixous

For Mamiffer’s Faith Coloccia and Aaron Turner, music is a divine language, a code to be deciphered, a map riddled with clues. Their latest album, The World Unseen, is a conceptual and liminal document of numinous connection through an experience with loss. It is an exploration of subconscious and psychic bonds between the past and present, and the ways in which the musical devices of repetition and incantation create hands across the chasm that divide the human from the divine.
Through the use of piano, voice, guitar, Wurlitzer organ, bass synthesizer, tape machines, and effects pedals, Coloccia and Turner have created an eight-song aural lexicon that vacillates between Arvo Pärt’s delicate minimalist beauty, Thomas Köner’s narcotic pulses of noise, and Richard Pinhas’ sublime textural patterns. Further expanding upon their explorations, Mamiffer enlisted Eyvind Kang for string arrangements. Geneviève Beaulieu (Menace Ruine) and Joe Preston (Thrones) make guest appearances on “Domestication of the Ewe pt. III”, contributing additional choral vocals and bass, and adding greater dimension to their auditory crossings. Despite this impressive arsenal of musicians and instruments, Mamiffer ultimately depends as much on empty space as they do upon the various oscillating frequencies within their sound. “The record is imperfect,” says Coloccia. “It has within its heart an incompleteness, a stillness containing the presence of absence and loss.”
It was a slow and patient journey to arrive at the final formation of The World Unseen.  Chance, accident and imperfections were used as compositional tools, and unplanned chaos revealed itself as having its own harmonious order and healing litany. The songs took their shape from source material that stretched back as far as 2011. Mamiffer then began to capture those songs in recording sessions at their home studio and at AVAST! Studio in Seattle with producer/engineer Randall Dunn throughout 2013 and 2014. The World Unseen sees the light of day in March 2016 on CD, 2xLP, and digital formats via SIGE Records in the U.S. and as a CD with a bonus disc on Daymare Records in Japan.

Interview with Raven Chacon

https://van-us.atavist.com/how-things-align