To the extent that Hardvapour is or is not “a thing” is still a heated topic for debate, one that traverses network after network down a rabbit hole of a million different spaces and actors, each as complicit and blameworthy as the next in a race to be the Next Big Thing amongst a sea of Experimental Bandcamps. Yet behind the genre’s intentional opacity lies a seedy resurgence of sounds we thought were firmly a part of the past, again rearing their cacophonous heads with a newfound political edge, now bleeding into the mix with a surge of dense programming, jagged VSTs, and a mastery of (or at least maybe a “more self-aware approach towards”) its deep spiderweb of sonic artifacts.
The latest from Hardvapour Resistance Front Central Command, Eva Weishaupt’s “Dirigens” brings this political edge to the forefront of their videography, placing analog cutups from French Revolution reenactments over fuzzy clips of plane landings and soaring VHS title sequences. Like the skittering MIDI of Oneohtrix Point Never’s “Problem Areas,” “Dirigens” bounds towards the edges of the digital map with a flutter of looped MIDI rhythm, a rushing bolt of mimetic synthesis. Allegedly mastered by Genevieve T. de Beaumont, the chosen name of an 18th century “diplomat, soldier, spy, [and] transvestite” who’s drag portrait hangs in London’s National Portrait Gallery, Weishaupt’s work channels a skittering dissonance of influences both past and present, remembering de Beaumont’s queer roots in forward-thinking laptop compositions that, at least at first glance, don’t contain much semblance to chorale arrangements or baroque chamber music.
Here with the premiere of their full-length debut Patriot, Eva Weishaupt (who must have some relation to Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati) puts forth nine blistering compositions that pummel speakers with a limitless discord of noise. Unlike the soviet kitsch of most hardvapour contemporaries, Patriot is a futurist collage of microscopic samples, a frenzy of scathing sounds jetstreamed into a chalky, teeth-clenching headspin. Tracks like “Nursery” and “The illuminated Path” are almost distroid in anxious affect, framing tight-knit synths with a bolt of electric dynamism, while “Rex,” “Areopagite,” and “Diffe-Hellman” look outward with an angled, drum-driven mania. The release’s most pop-oriented effort, “Minerval” pulls keyboard chaos into a beatless rush of happy hardcore that wouldn’t sound out of place on Rustie’s EVENIFYOUDONTBELIEVE, while “Patriot” whirls with a kaleidoscopic slot machine of blaring, maximalist noise.
Remember 1723, Remember 1776, Remember 1789, Remember 1837, Remember 1838
More about: Eva Weishaupt
