Bestial Burden
The barely controlled cacophony of *Bestial Burden* offers a ritual of suffering and catharsis, rendered in raw screams, brutal beats, and ear-grinding industrial noise. Pharmakon (the New York–based artist Margaret Chardiet) uses her own recent near-fatal illness as a departure point to explore the mortality of the flesh in pain-wracked pieces like “Vacuum,” “Body Betrays Itself,” and “Autoimmune.” Especially harrowing is “Primitive Struggle,” a rumbling track punctuated by gasps, coughs, and retching. A nightmarish rendition of Sonny Bono’s “Bang Bang” brings this uncompromising work to a ghoulish yet oddly bracing climax.
Four days before New York noise musician Margaret Chardiet was supposed leave for her first European tour as Pharmakon, she had a medical emergency which resulted in a major surgery. Suddenly, instead of getting on a plane, she was bedridden for three weeks, missing an organ. “After seeing internal photographs taken during the surgery, I became hyperaware of the complex network of systems just beneath the skin, any of which were liable to fail or falter at any time,” Chardiet said. “It all happened so fast and unexpectedly that my mind took a while to catch up to the reality of my recovery. I felt a widening divide between my physical and mental self. It was as though my body had betrayed me, acting as a separate entity from my consciousness. I thought of my corporeal body anthropomorphically, with a will or intent of its own, outside of my will's control, and seeking to sabotage. I began to explore the idea of the conscious mind as a stranger inside an autonomous vessel, and the tension that exists between these two versions of the self.” Consumed by these ideas, and unable to leave her bed, Chardiet occupied herself by writing the lyrics and music that would become Bestial Burden, the second Pharmakon LP for Sacred Bones Records. The record is a harrowing collection of deeply personal industrial noise tracks, each one brimming with struggle and weighted with the intensity of Chardiet’s internal conflict.
The sense of control Margaret Chardiet wields over her nasty, fire-breathing music provides a sense of structure that makes this very out-there music easy to grasp for those outside of noise music circles. Her work is marked by a push-and-push-harder tension between pummeling rhythms, swaths of power-electronics static, and her impressive, chilling howl.
An astonishing document of the fragility of the human condition, this utterly uncompromising album is one of the year's best.
Discover Bestial Burden by Pharmakon released in 2014. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
On the eve of her first European tour, Margaret "Pharmakon" Chardiet was admitted to hospital where she had a cyst removed that had collapsed one of her organs. This harrowing experience formed the mind-versus-body concept of her new record Bestial Burden
Northern Transmissions' review of the new album by Pharmakon 'Bestial Burden' out October 13th on Sacred Bones, the first single is "Body Betrays Itself"
As Pharmakon, Margaret Chardiet, a fixture in the New York noise scene and cofounder of the Red Light District collective in Far Rockaway, does not sound like she is in control.