>
<

Portals Editions

HORN, MARIA - Kontrapoetik

"Kontrapoetik is a personal and simultaneously historical investigation, tackling the turmoil-ridden past of composer Maria Horn's home region Ångermanland in northern Sweden, and her own counter-exorcism project thereof. Drawing from archival material, she taps into the conflict of the worker's movement's clash with the Swedish military in the 1930's that nearly triggered a revolution. Before that Ångermanland was the site of an execution of women accused of witchcraft in 1674. Norrland is sometimes referred to as "the colonies" because of the uneven distribution of the wealth generated by its natural resources, little of which is reinvested in the area. Since the 1970's, it has seen depopulation and disintegration of the welfare state. "Ångermanländska Bilder" is based on material from a collection of films that depict the environment of Ångermanland from 1930-1940: the manor houses of the rural community, steamboats transporting timber along the river, power plants, and sawmills. Concurrent with Horn's Ångermanland research, she was part of an artistic research project in the form of a satanic feminist sect. The goal of the sect was to develop a practice of ceremonies and rituals from counter-readings of the Christian genesis narratives, dismantling its misogynist traditions. In these, Lucifer is re-conceptualized as a feminist liberator, and seen as an ally in the struggle against a patriarchy supported by God and the priesthood. Several of the pieces on Kontrapoetik were composed specifically for ceremonial practices, such as "Ave", a composition built from a text by sect member Michelle Jangmyr. Field recordings sourced from the archives of The Härnösand Art Museum thread through magnetic tape, formatting stark portraits of Horn's attested narrative. Harmonically, inspiration is drawn from ancient Swedish pastoral music, minor scales and free contrapuntal progressions. Recordings from Swedish radio were uncovered from the archive and sampled and reinterpreted. The fusion of these sources with mellotron, church organ and Buchla 200 synthesizer creates an immersive music that welcomes other forms of listening, unhinged from the cerebral and guided by intuition. The territories explored by Horn on Kontrapoetik are vast, but at the heart of each piece is a strong fundament of reductionist technique; deceptively simple harmonic progressions are re-fractured through the means of inversion and repetition. Coupled with this is an almost tactile relationship to texture as well as an immaculate sense of the physicality of sound. This work, while saturated by longing and loss, never gives in, but stands steadfastly defiant." - Portals Editions.
  • Sale
  • Regular price $20.00


After nearly a decade of false starts, multiple game plans veering off the rails, and a handful of shattered hopes and/or dreams, the odyssey is finally complete—the new Fusetron site is here.

This is the first phase of a multipart rollout that will span the next few months: the currently browsable stock includes miscellaneous new releases from the past 8+ months (we have a lot of catching up to do), plus approximately a third of our backstock. Note that we’ve reduced/slashed prices on many titles and will continue to do so in order to make room for new stock. We’ll also be expanding / tweaking / improving / debugging the site itself (for example, we still have work to do on the automated international postage system, not to mention the inevitable inventory discrepancies that come with transferring an ancient and massive database to a new system).

Over the next few months, as we take inventory, clean house, and delve into our storage, we will be uploading thousands of additional items, gradually, on a near-daily basis. This will include the majority of the LPs, as well as many titles, in all formats, once thought long-gone. Many currently “sold out” items are likely to resurface.

Finally, once our general backstock is up (probably in the next two or three months) we’ll begin making our extensive stockpile of rarities available online for the first time: tons of random out-of-print titles, "deadstock," warehouse finds, secondhand collectibles, etc., accumulated over the past few decades.

Frequent/returning customers will be getting early access to these items. Details to follow on how this will work (a priority mailing list? a 'frequent flyer'-like program?), but it will not be based on dollars spent. We want to reward those who consistently support us, especially in the discogs marketplace era (to those who show up trying to poach five copies of a one-off rarity, and nothing else, ever… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

So—we suggest you take some time to dig through the site—even we’ve been surprised by what’s been turning up, and there’s much more to come.
I understand these terms

Sale

Unavailable

Sold Out