Pharmakon, “Self-Regulating System” (Sacred Bones)
Pharmakon (aka Margaret Chardiet) is back to wreak havoc on your quixotic dream of living a quiet, peaceful existence. As I put it in a 2013 Data Breaker column, “[Pharmakon’s] stock in trade is sheer hellish noise miasma, but rendered with acute attention to dynamics and texture, and topped off with screams that out-agonize the late Sam Kinison’s.” If that sounds like your cup of lava, you’ll dig Ms. Chardiet’s latest slab of aural agony, “Self-Regulating System,” the first single from her fourth album, Devour (out August 30; view the trailer here).
Chardiet dedicates Devour “to all who were lost to their own demise, all who have been institutionalized; whether in prison, psychiatric facilities, or drug rehabilitation. It is for all those ostracized by and isolated from a totality which chews them up alive in a self-cannibalizing caste system… This is for the rest of us, who understand that chaos, madness, pain and even self-destruction are natural and inevitable responses to an unjust and disgusting world of our own making.”
Given that warning, it will not shock to discover that “Self-Regulating System” shudders into being like a demonic piece of factory machinery, its ominous chug cross-hatched with aggrieved hissing and hideously corrugated horn blats. When Chardiet’s vocals barge into the fray, it’s as if she’s being torn asunder at the mic. What is she bellowing? If you ever really found out, you might never get a good night’s sleep again. “Self-Regulating System”—like all the tracks on the album, recorded live in the studio by Ben Greenberg—is another pinnacle of maniacally controlled chaos, an artful orchestration of abattoir ambiance. Welcome back to Margaret Chardiet’s compelling nightmare.
