Consent Forms from Observation Gentle by Vireme

# Consent Forms

Beneath sheets of sterile light, we dismantled an archive of patient signatures for this piece. Institutional power lives in these shuffled papers – documented agreements to procedures never fully explained. The warm ambience that opens "Consent Forms" is deceptive; it's the false comfort of a waiting room, the momentary relief before processing begins.

We recorded this in the abandoned intake office where thousands once signed their autonomy away. Preparatory piano clusters float like dust motes through the air while the tape manipulations mirror the smudging of identity that happens with each form completed. Notice how the percussion arrives precisely when the piano attempts coherence – the system's gentle correction of any emerging personhood.

First impressions can be misleading here. What initially feels meditative gradually reveals its underlying mechanism of control. By the bridge, the detuned harmonics and reversed pulses begin to crack through the veneer of voluntary participation.

The juxtaposition is deliberate: comforting tones against the anxiety of paperwork that reduces you to a case number. Those oscillating radio fragments that emerge during the chorus? Pulled directly from the facility's intercom system, still somehow operational decades after abandonment. When we placed microphones near the ceiling speakers, they captured these ghostly transmissions without any input source.

Listen for the moment at 3:27 when the prepared piano finally resolves its pattern, only to be slowly erased by the tape manipulation that follows – like watching someone's signature fade from a critical document while the ink is still wet.

We scavenge the frequencies others discard. Broken equipment, mechanical failure, industrial decay—these are our instruments. Prepare for sonic trespass as we transmit from the abandoned Loamfold Facility. No melodies, only disruption.