Composer & Interdisciplinary Artist Gryphon Rue Shares Video For "Rake's Progress" From New LP '4n_Objx'

Gryphon Rue is sharing the single and video for "Rake's Progress" from his new LP 4n_Objx - an almost indescribable burst of creativity from a restless artist we last heard from on 2022's A Spirit Appears to a Pair of Lovers. The "Rake's Progress" video was directed by Keren Cytter and features dancer Nathlie Provosty, who magnetically mirrors the propulsive beat and squelchy synch chaos of the tune.

Watch the video here.

Texturally complex and rhythmically bold, Gryphon Rue’s enigmatic full-length 4n_Objx is imbued with a sense of the profound. From staggeringly rich drones –– woven out of harmoniums and oscillators –– to tactile, live percussion and pulsing synths, the ten tracks that comprise 4n_Objx careen, lunge, and leap from cliff to ridge, circuit to synapse.

Rue è un compositore, un artista interdisciplinare e un curatore – e questa è la musica costruita su un fascino per il potenziale mimetico dei suoni, “la loro capacità di suggerire azioni biologiche o eventi molecolari”, dice Rue.

There is a kind of cyberpunk feel here, not in a nostalgic way, but in the way that William Gibson’s early novels interweave the biological and the synthetic as both threatening and undeniably sexy. In fact, Rue says, “I’m attracted to music that interphases acoustic and electronic sources, abstractions of all media which suggest creaturely behavior.” This sort of interphasing may bring to mind the work of a contemporary like Marina Herlop but has perhaps just as much in common with the organic-mechanic push and pull of Seefeel’s Quique.

“Rake’s Progress” is a chase scene which careens into the consequence that is “Dividend.” There is a sense of gravity in this music. “World’s Fastest Talking Man” threatens to –– and then does –– take off into steady passages reminiscent of Negativland or Terry Riley. 4n_Objx is on the whole syncretic. It grafts and fuses; it is dance music –– if by dance, we might describe the movement of electricity through the brain, fireflies through the night, or fluids through the body. Roughly hewn field recordings spark along channels of finely polished sound throughout 4n_Objx, all folded together by a wild but sophisticated sense of rhythm which will appeal to fans of African Head Charge, CAN’s Future Days, or Roberto Musci’s Tower of Silence.

This is not techno and Rue is not a DJ. Yet the gestures of live mixing feed what Rue calls “elastic dance” – a broader look at left-field dance, nervy grooves with a post-punk aesthetic. These alchemical objects remind us of the moments when punks like Lizzy Mercier Descloux or Liquid Liquid picked up bric-a-brac percussion. In the 90s, Rue was a kid regular at his grandfather’s warehouse Club Vinyl in New York, where he spent time in the DJ booth, eyes fixed on dancefloor heavyweights like Danny Tenaglia and Timmy Regisford.

But such gestures are only parts of a whole, its total shape something like a collaged spiral. Rue’s ability to variously juxtapose, layer, and fuse disparate elements into staggering cohesion suggests, in fact, that no object is truly foreign.

“L’ascolto” cominciò con le registrazioni dei suoni emessi dallo stomaco di Rue e “L’operazione per l’embodimento preferito” cominciò con le registrazioni della voce di suo padre. “Volevo trasformare la voce in uno strumento eolico”, dice Rue. L’inclusione di questi elementi organici, forse sentimentali, è, naturalmente, più che novità. “La mia musica”, dice Rue, “non è una questione di possesso, di nutrimento. Per me fornisce una fonte e uno spazio di buona opera che è un rifugio dall’esterno, dalla dispensazione”. Questa affermazione parla alla profondità del pensiero di Rue sul suo lavoro e sulla sensibilità della sua esecuzione. “4n_Objx non è una delle cose che sembra essere; per

Rue ha registrato per Astral Editions, Not Fun, Soap Library, CAMP editions, e Tiger Sushi e ha collaborato con Ka Baird, Qasim Naqvi, Bergsonist, Merche Blasco, Dean Wareham, Susie Ibarra, Valentina Magaletti, e molti altri. Recentemente ha suonato a Fondazion ICA Milano, Experimental Intermedia, de Young Museum, Roulette Mixology Festival, Hauser & Wirth, e altri. Ha tenuto presentazioni al Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Kunstsammlung Düsseldorf, e ha organizzato mostre per Ballroom Marfa e The Calder Foundation in luoghi non tradizionali come una costruzione in zona ferma e una rifectoria neo-gotica. Ha una mostra regolare su Montez Press Radio parlando con figure come Phill Niblock, Annea L

di Mark Trecka

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