KY – Power Is The Pharmacy – LP – Gatefold 180g Vinyl [MAY 12]

LP – 180g Black Vinyl housed in a Gatefold Sleeve. Includes download code.

Ky is the new solo project of Ky Brooks, best known as vocalist / lyricist of noise trio Lungbutter and a slew of other Montral-based out-music projects like 8-person queer punk band Femmaggots and experimental / improv trio Nag. Power Is The Pharmacy is an album of cerebral and visceral artpunk mainly about grief, death, the fear of loss, losing dreams, losing youth, people, public space, ultimately oneself an emotionally electrifying collection of songs fuelled by Kys piercing poetry, both spoken and sung, delivering an incisive blend of socio-political observation and spiritual sadness, swirling through vortices of disenchantment and re-enchantment.

The seeds of Power Is The Pharmacy were planted in pre-lockdown performances where Big|Braves Mat Ball played tape loops to Kys poems, with their intent to figure out how to make music that involved singing in a more melodic way and use parts of my voice I wasnt using with Lungbutter and other noise / punk projects. Then pandemic hit, along with Canadian pandemic income support, allowing for Kys acquisition of a couple of mini-synths. Songs took on all kinds of further re-shaping in the isolation of Montrals intense lockdown winter 2020-21. Then devastating tragedy struck (as it had for so many) in spring 2021 when Lungbutter drummer and dear friend Joni Sadler died suddenly of a brain aneurism. Ky describes All The Sad And Loving People as the most direct piece of writing Ive done in response to Jonis passing and the songs haunting, devotional simplicity is a numinous album highlight among many.

Power Is The Pharmacy careens through hissing bruitist synthscape, free / jazz sprinkles, soft-focus gauze, coldwave and ambient-to-thick sludge, all anchored by Kys superbly sly, searching, serrated lyrics and voice. The album ranges from trenchant spoken-word tracks like Power Is The Pharmacy (Teeth) and Work That Superficially Looks Like Leisure – which repeats the line Suddenly! / No not suddenly! / But with a fantastic regularity and remarkable softness! / I woke up and decided I knew how to work! to the haunting electro of The Dancer and All The Sad And Loving People (most overtly evoking Big Science-era Laurie Anderson, a recurring stylistic touchstone). The albums second half brings Balls incendiary noise-improv guitar to the fore, along with Kys voice more fiercely and soulfully unleashed, on heavy incantatory cuts like Revolving Door, Dragons and the quasi-operatic cabaret of Listen! Avoid Magic! Be Aware!

Ky enlisted a diverse crew of fellow Montral iconoclasts to flesh out this gripping voyage through unruly stylistic and mood swings of experimental song, including the aforementioned Mat Ball, synth maven Nick Schofield, saxophonist James Goddard (Egyptian Cotton Arkestra), bassist Joshua Frank (Gong Gong Gong) and drummer Farley Miller (Shining Wizard). Ky composed all the music, plays synths and guitars, asked all these friends to not under any circumstances play any particular thing and then and mixed the album for 10 million years. The album draws its title from A Critique Of Black Reason by Achille Mbembe, as quoted in the liner notes: Power is the pharmacy, thanks to its capacity to transform the sources of death into a seeding strength, or to convert the resources of death into the capacity for healing. And it is because of its dual ability to be the force of life and the principle of death that power is at once revered and feared. But the relationship between the principles of life and death is fundamentally unstable.

For fans of: Hyd, Sub Rosa, Nadah El Shazly, Ben Shemie, NGHTCRWLR, Holobody, Ruby Blue-era Rosn Murphy, Big Science-era Laurie Anderson.

Tracklist:

01. Power Is The Pharmacy (Teeth)
02. All The Sad And Loving People
03. Work That Superficially Looks Like Leisure
04. The Dancer
05. Revolving Door
06. Listen! Avoid Magic! Be Aware!
07. Dragons
08. Elvin Silverware
09. The Replacement