Interregnum MMXXII by Dominique Cyprès

Interregnum MMXXII is a musical odyssey into the heart of the Anthropocene.


“In 2021 I put together three albums this way, working largely in moments when our infant second child was napping. The first was born out of the peculiar moment before most of us even in the US could be vaccinated against COVID-19, a moment when I had been at once inspired by many individual acts of kindness and self-sacrifice, and deeply embittered by what I saw as higher-level failures to prioritize human life and prevent mass death and mass suffering—musically influenced at times by 1970s "classitronic" pioneers like Tomita and Wendy Carlos, and incorporating some of my favourite western classical passages from childhood in a novel context. In a second album I took a more relaxed approach of exploring ambient soundscapes often inspired by physical places I had visited. And the third album was a concept piece meditating upon a fringe, but culturally significant American religious/political movement called Peoples Temple that ended in the notorious "revolutionary suicide" of their Guyanese agricultural settlement Jonestown in 1978. "Alienation" on Interregnum MMXXII is an alternate instrumental take of a track from this last album.

With Interregnum MMXXII I am once again regrettably channeling the anxieties of this historical moment. A sense that the weight of history is more unbearable than ever. That the United States exists in a state of slow imperial collapse, but also that the whole world rests on shaky ground, caught unprepared to face the challenges of a pandemic and of anthropogenic climate change. To that end it's a largely brooding album, following from the ambient sounds of previous work but with more dissonance and harsh timbres, inspired by the troubled history of our current world order. But I have also tried to leave space for the potential of a constructive common struggle to imagine and build a better world, evidenced in the titles "Direct Action" and "Seize the Means." I felt that a cold and thunderous arrangement of the Allegretto from Beethoven's 7th Symphony provided an excellent sonic centre for this album that otherwise comprises my own far-less-expert compositions. In my imagination the composition captures a moment of tumult that may help us maintain some perspective on the present, a moment of war engulfing the European continent just as its thinkers reached for humanistic and democratic horizons, and a confrontation with the great betrayal of Beethoven's one-time political saviour Napoleon.”

Released as part of our 2022 #summerofsynth series.

The Submarine Broadcasting Company is an independent label showcasing the best in experimental, left-field and art-house music.

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