【译】Pitchfork评 Elysia Crampton - ORCORARA 2010
Crampton的新专辑向一位在加利福尼亚州内华达山脉与野火搏斗多年的被监禁男子致敬，他直面潜在的的暴力体系。
Dedicated to an incarcerated man who spent years fighting wildfires in California’s Sierra Nevada, Crampton's latest album confronts the systems of oppression hidden in plain sight.
数千年来，内华达山脉经常爆发野火。在Yoruk和Karuk等土著部落的控制之下，这些森林大火清除了杂草和垃圾，保持了当地生态系统的繁荣，但是如果任其疯长、积累，就可能会引发难以控制的火灾。当加利福尼亚州在20世纪初制定消防措施时，火种开始积聚。在过去几年里，该州的水源因全球变暖而干涸，遭受了毁灭性的大火，其中许多大火是由收入低于最低工资的监狱工人和训练有素的消防队员共同扑灭的。这一现象几乎将当今美国的无数恐怖化为了一个场景：在一片着火的森林中，几个世纪的殖民主义正在逼迫囚犯们打乱其生态系统更新换代的节奏。
For thousands of years, the Sierra Nevada mountains regularly pulsed with wildfires. Lit by indigenous tribes like the Yurok and the Karuk, these controlled burns kept local ecosystems thriving,clearing weeds and detritus that, if left to accumulate, could fuel devastating infernos. When the state of California instituted fire control measures in the early 20th century, that kindling began to build up. Dried out by global warming, the state’s forests have succumbed to hellish blazes in the past few years, many of which have been fought by prison laborers making less than minimum wage alongside trained firefighters. It’s a phenomenon that nearly condenses the myriad horrors of the contemporary United States into a single scene: a forest on fire, thrown out of rhythm by centuries of colonialism,hosed down by people caught in the gears of the prison industrial complex.
印第安制作人Elysia Crampton的实验电子音乐是过去十年中最独特、最别具一格的音乐之一，她的新专辑致敬了Paul Sousa，他在被监禁期间，在加利福尼亚州内华达山脉做了数年的囚犯消防员。其实这张专辑最初是作为Crampton在2018年Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement双年展上首次亮相的艺术作品的配乐发行的。Elysia最开始是故意让听众们在一个有着不断晃动的模糊光线的黑暗房间中听到这张专辑，在这个环境中，声音充满了每一个感官，整个大脑都陶醉于音乐之中。作为一张专辑，ORCORARA 2010再次唤起了那种聆听方式。虽然这张专辑节奏非常慢，但是，就像是对耐心的听众的奖励一样，每一个能耐心听完的人都能感受到一种精巧而又包罗万象的美。
Elysia Crampton, the American Indian producer whose experimental electronic music ranks among the most singular and idiosyncratic of the past decade, dedicates her latest full-length release to Paul Sousa, a man “who while incarcerated, worked years as an inmate firefighter across the Sierra Nevada of California.” This image hangs overORCORARA 2010, which was originally released as the sound track to an installation Crampton debuted at theBiennale de l’Image en Mouvement 2018. It was first meant to be heard in a darkroom throbbing with diffuse light, an environment where sound overwhelms the senses and the mind can fall into a trance state. As an album,ORCORARA2010calls back to that method of listening. Its slow, sparse gestures reward patient attention with delicate, enveloping beauty.
在Crampton 2018年发行的结构紧凑且精简的同名专辑中，人声就像遥远的广播塔发出的零星的信号一样，时隐时现。而在ORCORARA 2010中，声音通过一些合作艺人而成为了中心乐器。Jeremy Rojas在几首以钢琴为主体的歌曲中加入了spoken word，这让这张专辑的叙事更加曲折，而纽约歌手Embaci和Shannon Funchess的人声则出现在这张专辑的两个高潮点。Embaci经过古典训练的嗓音回旋于杂乱的原声吉他、嗡嗡作响的合成器和猫头鹰叫声之间，这首歌的平静掩盖了内心深处极度的不安。两轨吉他时而同时响起，时而交错，她的声音也因内心的混乱和不安而从甜美而逐渐变得犀利。Light Asylum乐队成员Funchess的无可挑剔的声音曾出现在the Knife 2013年的专辑Shaking the Habitual中并使其变得更加优雅，她出现在“Crucifixion”中的人声可以说是惊世骇俗，“Crucfixion”是一首慢节奏而又递进的歌，在高潮部分，越来越多的声音堆叠起来，就像是要崩溃一样。Elysia并没有用持续的节拍来为她激动人心的颤音打底，只有一堆数字的和实体的乐器在背景中颤抖，直到鼓消失，以疯狂的钢琴和管风琴结束了这首歌。
On Crampton’s tight, condensedself-titled albumfrom 2018,voices flitted in and out like stray transmissions from distant broadcast towers. Here, the voice emerges as a central instrument by way of a handful of guests. Jeremy Rojas layers a spoken-word performance atop several piano-driven tracks that set the record’s oblique narratives in motion, while the New York-based singersEmbaciandShannon Funchessappear at two of the album’s high points. Embaci‘s classically trained voice darts between tangled acoustic guitars, droning synthesizers, and owl calls on“Grove,” a song whose placidity belies a gut-deep restlessness. Twin guitar lines strobe in and out of sync, and her voice lifts away from the confusion,gliding and searching. Later,Light Asylum’s Funchess, whose unmistakable voice gracedthe Knife’s 2013 albumShaking the Habitual, makes an earth-shaking appearance on “Crucifixion,” a slowly building piece that increasingly sounds like it’s on the verge of toppling. There’s no steady beat to ground her stirring vibrato, just a thicket of quavering instruments,digital and physical, that pulse until a frenetic piano and drum breakdown ushers her out.
Elysia Crampton这张专辑的spoken word都不断地回归到暮光（twilight）的概念，这是一种充满活力的临界状态，日光逐渐消退，所见物体之间的清晰线条往往会变得模糊。 “I confused you with the twilight/Confusing myself with you”，合作歌手Fanny Pankara Chuquimia在平静的冥想歌曲“Crest”中说道。黄昏中，人与人之间——自我与他者，“我”与“你”之间的界限变得柔和。思想和欲望似乎要跳出人的身体。感受和想法从一个人的皮肤通过血液输送到另一个人身上，个体逐渐融入到环境中。
The album’s spoken-word segments return continually to the concept of twilight, a charged and liminal state where daylight ebbs away and the clean lines between seen objects tend to blur. “I confused you with the twilight/Confusing myself with you,” says guest vocalist Fanny Pankara Chuquimia on the tranquil meditation “Crest.” In this dusk,boundaries between people—between the self and the other, the “I” and the “you”—soften.Thoughts and desires become harder to constrain inside a single body. Feeling bleeds from skin to skin, and the individual dissolves into the environment.
ORCORARA 2010这张专辑充满了环境音乐和各种留白，里面的诗句充满着种种哲思，并且时不时出现混乱的高潮，最后渐渐消逝，这实在是太精彩了，精彩到使外面的世界看起来很怪异，在这一点上，它具有政治力量：很多暴力体系是靠习惯生存的。足够多的人已经接受了将他人关在监狱里，并在火势失控时将他们送出去救火的做法。足够多的人同意维持这个国家和其他国家的许多暴力行为，以至于这种暴行被自然化，这些人显然是对这些暴行的一个看起来遥远但持续的支柱。这些暴力体系与个人的力量相比简直是坚不可摧，因为它目前靠一个个签订秘密协议的人组成的网络来维持自己，每个人都是这样一场大行动中的一个小细胞，如果要以个人的力量来推翻这样一个体系恐怕是千难万难。要怎样才能在其他方面达成一致----如何减轻他们的，以及我们的痛苦？如何在那种地方让更少的人死亡？在其催眠性的氛围音乐和与之形成鲜明对比的大量的混乱中，ORCORARA 2010打开了一扇门，通向隐藏在目前状况之上的更加理想的生活。
Full of slippage and lacunae, whipping itself from moment to moment and then fading,ORCORARA 2010is so absorbing as to make the world outside it seem bizarre, and in this it has political power: There are a great many systems of harm that survive on habit.Enough people have accepted that it is normal to lock others away in cages and send them out to fight fires when the fires get out of hand. Enough people agree upon the many acts of violence sustaining this and other countries that the atrocity is naturalized, a distant but constant pillar of a certain way of life. These systems are bigger than any one person and yet sustain themselves on individuals networked in covert agreement, people who act as porous cells for mass behavior. What would it take to agree on something else—something less painful, where fewer of us die? In its hypnotic and generative confusion,ORCORARA 2010bores open a portal to a life hiding just beyond this one.
