BABYLON by Marco MAL LOPRIENO
"when panic is looming should we slow the rhythm or should we accelerate?"
Franco Berardi - Bifo
BABYLON is another chapter in my personal adventure on sounds and life. like DOORS before it is intended to be not only a picture of where we are now in time and space but also a tool or a map. it is an instrument to facilitate the journey, first for myself, but also for others, not everybody, of course. those willing to explore my musical and life suggestions here.
we are living a sort of quasi-unavoidable going-back-to-darkness time. we must be aware of that, aware that chaos, confusion, panic are emerging. we cannot fight them frontally, then we should use them. we cannot fight chaos. this does not mean that we should do nothing. rather we should do without doing.
as Franco Berardi Bifo says “don’t look directly at the horror, don’t look directly at darkness. Indirect vision (irony) is a condition for avoiding fear, for avoiding slavery; a condition for autonomy”. in other words, lightness, irony, poetry, imagination should be our tools to go beyond passive resistance and start building our alternative time-space.
the trip starts at BABYLON. the eternal myth of the rise of Babylon (Babel), the mighty and beautiful capital of Mesopotamia, and of its tallest tower, the ziggurat with its terraces full of flowers and animals. both built by a golden-age united human race, speaking one language, wishing to leave a powerful sign and to touch the sky, trying reaching God.
the fall of Babylon when angry God stopped construction of the tower by scattering humanity across the earth and confusing their communication so they are unable to understand each other in the same language. the result of that was/is not only confusion, but also rage, violence, panic... therefore, should we slow the rhythm or should we accelerate?
we are living a time of fat cows, opulence, inequality, extreme wealth and poverty. just make an effort to imagine, after the cows, their flies, FAT FLIES, 100 pounds heavy flies flying around. flies made fat by all the rotten stuff, our waste & the cow-shit, of course, they eat. imagine the sounds they make, the rhythm they follow... FAT FLIES everywhere!
KALI MA goddess, the Divine Mother, the Dark Mother, the Terrible Mother. KALI MA the Hindu goddess of time, creation, preservation, and destruction. as fearsome as she may appear, she is the most compassionate goddess of them all. A techno-trance dance, fast and geometric is how we look at it, the Dark Mother.
my response to the “commander in chief” is THE DONALD, because we need now to take a stand against hate politics, mass manipulation, xenophobia, total incompetence, climate & covid 19 deniers, EXXON ... and we need to take a stand lightly and ironically in order not being annihilated by stupidity, horror, darkness.
pain, sorrow and death are there. we shall not ignore them and especially now we should be aware of them.
400 COLPI (400 Blows) is dedicated to my brother Andrea who passed away on 14 February 2018. it is inspired by the François Truffaut's movie Les Quatre Cents Coups and especially by the end when the kid is on the beach and is going into the sea disappearing ... calm and serene ...
LUMUMBA was a MAN of hope and freedom during the independence and birth of the Congo nation in 1960; but also, a MAN of pain and sorrow when he was kidnapped, tortured and brutally murdered few months after, in 1961.
RULE & CHANCE, is the endless conflict between Apollo, the ethical and moderate god and Dionysus the god of joy and chaos. the eternal fight between structure and improvisation and how one cannot live without the other.
finally, STARDOLL, a dance-trance composition inspired by reading "Les Résidents" one of the last books written by the great late Sci-Fi French writer Maurice Dantec, is another attempt to see what to do without doing ...
anyhow "when panic is looming should we slow the rhythm or should we accelerate?"
Babylon is still around us; Babylon is us ...
Marco MAL LOPRIENO, Bruxelles, 14 August 2020
Tracklist
| 1. | BABYLON | 4:57 |
| 2. | FAT FLIES | 4:40 |
| 3. | KALI MA | 3:00 |
| 4. | THE DONALD | 4:45 |
| 5. | 400 COLPI | 7:56 |
| 6. | LUMUMBA | 4:49 |
| 7. | RULE & CHANCE | 5:28 |
| 8. | STARDOLL | 4:00 |
Credits
Marco MAL LOPRIENO: instant composition; flute, bass C flute, bass G flute; sopranino, soprano, alto,tenor, baritone saxes; bass, contra-alto, contrabass clarinets; electronics; sampling; Kaossilator; Ableton LIVE & PUSH; ROLI blocks & seaboard; percussion; gongs; bells; field recordings; bird-calls; bent toys; noises
liner notes
Pat LUGO: photo, voice (RULE & CHANCE)
Andrew WEATHERS: mastering
License
CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. See the Creative Commons website for details.
EXIT_LAB is a laboratory, a place to meet and an informal platform dedicated to explore and promote art, performance and social action.
it is located in Anderlecht, Belgium (EXIT_LOFT) it was created 18 years ago by Pat Lugo and Marco MAL Loprieno.
MARCO MAL LOPRIENO - wind instruments, percussions, sounds manipulation, field recordings, electronics
PAT LUGO - voice, photo, text and visual.