A Survey of Locked Modes
Blood Wedding/ Timothy Morton/ Marlo Pascual
Review by Emily Pothast
A Survey of Locked Modes is the second release from Future Audio Graphics, a new imprint based in Queens, New York. The label’s mission is unusual and very specific: each limited edition, full color gatefold LP is a three-way collaboration between a visual artist, a musical artist, and a writer. In this case, the cover image is a work by Brooklyn-based multimedia artist Marlo Pascual, the music is the first physical release by Bay Area ambient drone duo Blood Wedding, and the accompanying essay was written by Timothy Morton, an object-oriented ontologist and Professor of English at Rice University.
First and foremost: Blood Wedding’s music is simply gorgeous. Vocalist Danishta Rivero’s spare, processed utterances drift in and out of phase with Chuck Johnson’s justly tuned electronics and E-bowed steel guitar to create deep sonic structures rife with harmonic subtly. Their compositions are, according to the label’s blurb, an attempt to sonify what Morton defines as “the hyperobject, objects and forms so massively distributed in time and space that they transcend categories and localization.”