Nocebo

"I’d like to write about the dread that reaches a convulsion now on 'Nocebo'. I’d like to write about the kind of dread that prompts Blanchot, for instance, to write: Dread: ‘Do nothing, and it is still too much.’ The kind of dread that 9T Antiope conjures in 'Nocebo', as in the interstices of this whispered dialogue. A dread that sustains without collapsing the tension between a throbbing electronic doom and the mercurial, almost heavenly break in the clouds, where out of clear light, a fragment of violin quivers like a choir from afar. The dread that, like a silent scream, though silent, screams endlessly. The dread that even the scream can’t silence. The dread that even the scream can’t silence dread. The worse than dead and dying dread. The dread that I’d like to write about is the dread that, as soon as I write it, is the dread that writes me and I say nothing. In the panic of the heart’s hysterics, dread morcellates, hammers, pulverizes. It ravishes, slashes, seething, flesh, any pain to silence its silence; yet its calm, its indifference, its tranquility, from which I (it) witness my (its) frenzied horror with remorse is the utmost agony. Far worse than the ache, the gash, the pang is the silence, the swoon, the stillness of eyes with no beyond to their depth. The pain that severs the pity from the flesh, the silence from the doom, is dread, the dread of all dread, the dread no dying can free, no sleep can soothe." - 4/5 on Tiny Mix Tapes, Mar. 1, 2019. Web. www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/9t-antiope-nocebo ----------------------------------------------------------------- "9T Antiope’s 'Nocebo' is an intensely personal document—dense, visceral, and sensory. ... (The album) takes the idea of a coma and uses it to build an imaginative world, creating a story of beings who have given up on their time and space, eventually reaching a comatose state. It’s an emotional meteor of a concept, devastating and long-reaching … with throbbing, uncomfortable soundscapes. ... By the end of the recording, the listener is spent, and the beings are comatose. It’s a light drop into unconsciousness, but there may be no gentler way to go.” - 'Album of the Day' on Bandcamp, Mar. 1, 2019. Web. daily.bandcamp.com/2019/03/01/9t-antiope-nocebo-review/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- "It might only be the second month of the year, but we’ve already found something necessary, haunting, and beautiful. ... Never has the concept and experience of withdrawal sounded so present, so immediate." - Igloo Mag, Feb. 24, 2019. Web. igloomag.com/profiles/9t-antiope-reaching-across-isolation ----------------------------------------------------------------- "This is music to reshape your reality to. This is music to unlock your nightmares to. This is music that will never make you feel comfortable. ... Allow this tape to be the soundtrack to the beginning of your new life…" -CVLTNATION, Feb. 15, 2019. Web. www.cvltnation.com/listen-psychological-sonic-disorder-9t-antiopes-nocebo/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- "('Nocebo') fixates on the absence (of space). They refer to it as an exploration of “non-location,” and it’s a music of isolation, and disjunct. “It’s like an implosion,” they write. “That moment when everything slows down before a blast maybe, that pulsating state where you go back and forth between a nightmare and a sweet second before waking up."" - 'Heavy Rotation' on Noisey, Feb. 15, 2019. Web. noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/xwba37/mijas-unexpected-ambience-and-11-other-albums-for-heavy-rotation ----------------------------------------------------------------- "(T)he duo’s most ambitious work to date, the listener response being a sort of spellbound reverie induced by the album’s harrowing and austere musical reality. … (V)ast sonic walls constructed through the juxtaposition of divergent elements and atmospheres … a sort of sonic thought experiment as cerebral as it is visceral. ... The tension of these multiple realities, coupled with the chaos of psychological disorder, is heard and felt across the album, like a pill prescribed for depression that ends up exacerbating mania. … (C)ollisions of sound with colour, the organic with the inorganic, to create a purgative environment dripping with decay. … (T)he arrival into an alternative world that might just replace the old one as we know it." - The Wire #421, March 2019. Print. www.instagram.com/p/Bt1XGIrF0I3/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Nocebo is a work of dust and bone, subtle cracks and deliquescent fluids, endless lives and buried memories. An intense album with voracious density. Vital." (translated) - SightAndSound, Feb 13, 2019. Web. silenceandsound.me/2019/02/13/9t-antiope-3/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- "(T)wo sidelong compositions that slide from the grasp whenever one tries to define them. The mood is darker, the vocals sparser, more spoken than sung. ... Have conditions deteriorated to the point that song has fallen prey to poetry, melody to abrasion? The recording is claustrophobic, menacing, jaded. This is the proper place for such a downward slide, as the tape sits in the spot of The Empire Strikes Back, the big question being, what happens next? We knew that Han Solo would be rescued; we’re less sure about the dreamers of Iran. ... Nocebo, much more than Isthmus, ends on a cliffhanger. There’s no way to predict which way 9T Antiope will go, as they’ve only now started to record the final chapter. Pyrrhic victory, noble defeat or unexpected triumph? If the conclusion is released before the world ends, we’ll be there to poke through the embers." - A Closer Listen, Feb 9, 2019. Web. acloserlisten.com/2019/02/09/9t-antiope-isthmus-nocebo/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Machine music at its finest with a few ominous vocals. Plenty of twisting and cracking that forms a staggering beat. Transmission-like waves become uncontrollable, making this track feel like a soon to be aborted space ship." - '15 Best Ambient... of January 2019' on Magnetic Magazine, Feb 2, 2019. Web. www.magneticmag.com/2019/02/15-best-ambient-and-chill-tracks-of-january-2019/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- "(E)qually sublime, disorienting, and psychedelic ... a claustrophobic, uneasy listen that manages to compel as much as terrify." - Ears To Feed: Tracks, Feb 5, 2019. Web. www.earstofeed.com/9t-antiope-living-through-sleeping-through/ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 9T Antiope's 'Nocebo' LP - out Feb 15, 2019 on PTP cassette and digital 'Nocebo' is the second phase from a trilogy - 'Isthmus:Nocebo:Placebo' – by Paris-based, Iranian composers, 9T Antiope (Nima Aghiani and Sara Bigdeli Shamloo). The album addresses space and time so as to create alternate worlds – those which would eventually stand to substitute the ones already in existence. "'Nocebo', recounts the stories of beings, who have given up on their space and time, thus forcing themselves into complete isolation and eventually a self-induced comatose state. The coma state within 'Nocebo' is explored through a text and imagery which still remains inside the brains of these beings – while simultaneously addressing the personal experiences of the artists' own loved ones.” Commissioned and produced by CTM Festival and SET Experimental Art Events, supported by the Goethe Institute.