MP3DB.pro - August Skipper - One Of The Receivers (2023)

‘One Of The Receivers’ is a collaborative, 8-track adaptation of the text, ‘Notes From A Pandemic’, released by August Skipper in 2020, a collection of poetry and abstract musings on the nature of shared delusion and collective psychosis in the face of extraordinary historical events. The music takes the form of heavy, cinematic drones, interspersed with moments of explosive sound design, a shifting base upon which a narrative unfolds that is at once dream-like, bizarre, foreboding and intimate.
In October of 2020 August Skipper released his text “Notes From A Pandemic” in book format. With text sleekly inlaid on a cloth bound cover, black on black, the materiality of the book contextualizes itself within the historically tense environment it came to fruition within. Hand numbered and signed, a limited edition of 200 copies, the gesture of intimacy between writer and reader is reflective. Skipper advertised the book as a reflection on “the psychic implosion resulting from the initial European quarantine”. Two years past the global phenomena that was, and for some still is, COVID-19 Skipper's negotiation of angst, vulnerability, and confusion was a prescient illustration of what would come to be a particularly turbulent world event.
November 14, 2023 sees the release of “One Of The Receivers”, a re-examination of Skipper’s text within an aural framework. Not simply a spoken word recanting of the text, Skipper uses “One Of The Receivers” as a new setting for dramaturgical collaboration and tonal placement of his writings. Skipper enlists fellow artists Cunce, Angelo Harmsworth, Luna Vassarotti, Samuel Savenberg, Wan, and Ireen Amnes to engender the uneasy surreality that is the post-pandemic zeitgeist into hallucinatory auditory landscapes. Skipper’s voice floats with dramatic affect over his collaborators’ sonic palettes, stylistically challenging his utility as both narrator and sound source in the environments that “One Of The Receivers” inhabits.
Skipper’s journal of uncertainty resonates in a new capacity from its initial inception both in time and media format. Curiously, the recycled investigation within his musings give pause for reflection that, in fact, we are perhaps in no further illuminated a space. Sitting amidst an interstitial contemporary reality of dread, boredom, and confusion we collectively yearn for a new kind of catharsis, one that seems, as yet, beyond our immediate grasp.