Music can be hard-wrought. Sometimes especially so. Thus it’s been for New York industrial noise artist Pharmakon (AKA Margaret Chardiet), who will perform at EMPAC in Troy this Friday. But it fits the music, for certain. And what’s also certain is that Chardiet and the cutting-edge EMPAC are a perfect pairing.
Chardiet underwent emergency surgery last year for a life-threatening cyst. In the weeks following her recovery time, she shaped Pharmakon’s new album, Bestial Burden (Sacred Bones Records), “while meditating on the raw viscera of the human body and translating it into visceral music.” Using extreme sound and power electronics, Chardiet describes Pharmakon’s challenging sound as a mode of expressing her “deep-seated need/drive/urge/possession to reach other people and make them FEEL something [specifically] in uncomfortable/confrontational ways.”
Here’s Pharmakon layin’ it down live at last winter at MoMA PS1’s Print Shop:
Pharmakon will perform at EMPAC at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy on Friday, December 5 at 8pm. Tickets are $18 and $13 for non-RPI students and senior citizens (!). For more information, call (518) 276-3921 or visit http://empac.rpi.edu/.
This article appears in November 2014.
