CARLOS GIFFONI sounds ARIANA REINES words ODO sounds AURORA HALAL images PAUL OHAN words
Catalog of knives of Diamond Mouth Surprise:
Obsidian: for opening the ailing body Copper: for tearing the soil and piercing the restless dead Steel: manumission and liberation treatments Silver: for relief from drought by sacrifice Bronze: all times at hip or in hand Jade: for cooling the over-hot tongue Tusk: for removing foul teeth and flesh Horn: for delaying effects of the equinox Mahogany: for the first born son Juniper: for the first born daughter Bone: when the air is yellow or silver Coral: by which Magxronj removed his own eyes Shell: for what is salty or acid Marble: for the spreading of oils Opal: festivals, celebrations, and self-defense in dreams
March 31st, the eve of the Unwrapping of the Knives. Come be Diamond Mouth Surprise. Discover whether this year will be one of cutting, being cut, or equal parts of both. Music, words, images, dancing, blades.
Carlos Giffoni is a Venezuelan electronic musician residing in the New York City area for the past 10 plus years. It’s here where Giffoni established himself not only as a jammer, but also as a curator of contemporary out music, as label head / festival director for No Fun Productions. Giffoni uses modular synthesizers, custom-built instruments, and various modes of analog and digital synthesis to compose electronic music pieces for physical formats. Giffoni’s recent work focuses on live analog synthesizer pieces in line with early cosmic electronic and techno music, while maintaining the harsher edge of his previous noise works. His 12” Evidence is recently out on Mexican Summer’s imprint Software.
Ariana Reines is the author of The Cow, Coeur de Lion, and Mercury. Telephone, her play commissioned by New York’s Foundry Theatre in 2009, was named one of the year’s best by the New York Times and the New Yorker and won two Obies. Translation work includes The Little Black Book of Grisélidis Réal: Days and Nights of an Anarchist Whore by Jean-Luc Hennig (Semiotext(e)), My Heart Laid Bare by Charles Baudelaire (Mal-O-Mar), and the forthcoming Preliminary Materials Toward a Theory of the YoungGirl (Working Title) by the TIQQUN collective (Semiotext(e)). In 2009, she was Roberta C. Holloway Lecturer in Poetry at UC Berkeley. She has also taught at Columbia University and The European Graduate School. A Vodou initiate, she is now exploring the relation between Vodou ritual and Greek tragedy, among other things.
Paul Ohan is a freelance writer who has worked for Style.com, New York Magazine, The Huffington Post, and Our Town. He has also worked as a stylist and dabbled in interior design. A product of New York City and Los Angeles, he received a B.A. from Wesleyan University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from The New School. His work can be found at airkissonmars.com.
After only a year, Diamond Atlas has garnered some serious praise from its peers and has established itself as a fresh, new voice in the growing blogosphere.
I’d like to send infinite love and thanks to all of you for your continued support.
You never know when you’re gonna wake up in a burning house or a brand new dimension. Splintering paths you hadn’t even thought possible yeseterday because it was covered up with overgrown weeds. But then, all of a sudden, you realize this was the only road you were ever supposed to take, the only one you can take. No going back. This, friends, is the notion and spirit of this group of songs. Take, eat, and keep the keel deep in the water.
Original artwork by Sydney artist and designer Jennifer Mehigan.
Please support these artists when you enjoy their music.
After downloading the mix folder, please create a new playlist in iTunes and then click and drag the folder to import, thereby maintaining track order.
Megafortress is the brainchild of New York-based experimental pop musician Bill Gillim. His self-titled debut on Software and Mexican Summer (home to previous Band of the Day Oneohtrix Point Never) is awaiting release on January 31st, and judging from this track we’re excited to hear it. His gently obscured falsetto is reminiscent of Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, and he completes the track with a simple arrangement including electronic steel drums and rainsticks. Fader also dubbed his music as “the most beautifully inward, fetal position-inducing music imaginable”.
And on that note, check out the video for “Green Child below” by Grant Nitsch.
Is Diamond Mouth Surprise the messenger or the message, within the house or the house itself? The answer has been described as analogous to the body, which exists whether animate or not. The Fragments speak on this:
“Do not think the purpose of the body was its living. Imagine the dream of a worm. And the soils? What of the earth if dirt were only minerals? …The lone blue crystal in the buried cave. Imagine if it had no hope of contact with the once-dead.”
You are the message, the messenger, the house, the space in the house, the diamond, the mouth, the surprise.
