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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.
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 is a composer, an interdisciplinary artist, and a curator –– and this is music built on a fascination with the mimetic potential of sounds, “their ability to suggest biological actions or molecular events,” Rue says. It is music that belies deep thinking, hypersensitivity to processes, to interrelatedness, and movement.
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.
“Auscultation” began with recordings of the sounds emitted by Rue’s own stomach and “Operation for Preferred Embodiment” began with recordings of his father’s voice. “I wanted to transform the voice into an aeolian instrument,” Rue says. The inclusion of these organic, perhaps sentimental elements is, of course, more than novelty. “My music,” says Rue, “is about possession, nourishment. For me it provides a source and space of good work which is a refuge from externalization, from dispossession.” This statement speaks to the depths of Rue’s thinking about his work and the sensitivity of his execution. 4n_Objx is none of the things it appears to be; for that to be the case, it would have to be reduced, externalized. But like the poetry of John Ashberry (one of Rue’s idols), it resists this, reveals itself through mimesis and interplay, dense and shifting.
Rue has recorded for Astral Editions, Not Not Fun, Soap Library, CAMP editions, and Tiger Sushi and has collaborated with Ka Baird, Qasim Naqvi, Bergsonist, Merche Blasco, Dean Wareham, Susie Ibarra, Valentina Magaletti, and many others. Recently he has performed at Fondazion ICA Milano, Experimental Intermedia, de Young Museum, Roulette Mixology Festival, Hauser & Wirth, and others. He has given presentations at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Kunstsammlung Düsseldorf, and organized exhibitions for Ballroom Marfa and The Calder Foundation in non-traditional locations such as a halted construction zone and a neo-Gothic refectory. He has a regular show on Montez Press Radio speaking with figures such as Phill Niblock, Annea Lockwood, David Behrman, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Clark Coolidge, and Fran Lebowitz. He is currently a resident artist at Roulette Intermedium, where on April 10th he performs North American premieres of Giusto Pio’s Motore Immobile and Ananta.
- Mark Trecka
Clandestine was founded in 2010 by the owners of Northern Spy Records to help like-minded labels and artists release and promote their music. Today, we’ve expanded to include a team of project managers, sales experts, manufacturing specialists, and publicists who bring decades of music and label experience to bear for our clients. We specialize in the marketing and distribution of experimental and adventurous music and, in the last fourteen years, have helped release over one thousand albums.
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