Is there anything unsettling about psychedelia anymore? It’s been generations since Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane, since college dorm rooms had that sort of dizzying tapestries and Grateful Dead kitsch that my dad still proudly holds onto today. After Animal Collective went electric, there was no escaping psychedelia without synths and drum machines, new tools to usher entropic face melting into a new era. The latest from her forthcoming release, For Haku, with RVNG. Intl, RAMZi’s “00” oozes with an upbeat tremor, rolling through stippled flecks of technicolor that add up to something sleek, spectral, and flowing—a ghostly artifact of subtractive synthesis in psych. Like Eric Copeland’s Jesus Freak or Mikael Seifu’s Zelalem, the track weaves alien electronics into a tapestry of field recordings and polyrhythms, blurring form and function into a dynamic futurist collage. It’s a track that commands visuals, making its pairing with Philadelphian artist Jessica Hans’ perfect for RVNG Intl.’s COMMEND See series, a new joint exhibition venture at the RVNG. Intl. brick-n-mortar retail space, Commend, in New York’s Lower East Side. Caked in thick rhythms stretching upward without end, “00” rattles in reverence, a playful exchange slurring electronic and human traditions as one.
More about: Ramzi
