Blessed Initiative - Blessed Initiative (2016)

Blessed Initiative is a project by Yair Elazar Glotman, which suggests a dissonant, coexistent state of extreme highs and lows. The album attempts to articulate a mental state of simultaneity, in which equilibrium is fleeting, fragile, and its scarcity is embraced. Opposite states coincide, contrast and reflect, creating moments of uncertainty and insecurity. Absurdity and at times even bliss are possible results, in the attempt to channel anxiety into creative forces rather than debilitating ones. In an environment where personas are the sums of the images they project, sounds are also no longer evidence of invention but of ever-changing combination, curation, and editing. The final persona is a sum of the chosen and the deleted, as well as what may be projected from outside, creating a confusing and conflicted self. The sounds collected here are attempts to compose on these uncertain grounds, and to reflect the anxiety released in all these sources’ meeting and interaction. As a singular project, Blessed Initiative stops to comment on the conditions that inform Glotman’s composition before and after it, and to acknowledge it as a non-linear, ongoing process.

The focus on process and uncertainty is apparent in the album’s phrasing, re-articulation and cycles of repetition and deviation. The pieces were composed from sounds generated on the KYMA system, personal foley recordings as well as tape manipulations techniques. Minor sounds on major scales and micro-tonal tuning suggest an ambiguous harmonic sphere. These were then integrated within idiosyncratic rhythmic structures, at times integrating real spaces and resonating bodies as reverb and augmented echo chambers. Concrete, almost-recognizable organic sounds contrast with these abstract spaces and connect them to tactile experiences. These textures and structures are a palette that reforms and deforms as it cycles throughout the album.

The photographic series “Relax (blue)”, 2004, by the artist Josephine Pryde was chosen for the album’s cover as a materialization of tension. The two images represent a closed cycle of energy and unfulfilled release.

Yair Elazar Glotman is a classically trained musician and sound artist based in Berlin whose previous works on Subtext include the Lp Études and a collaborative score with James Ginzburg for the experimental film Nimbes. Glotman has also released work under a number of pseudonyms, most notably as Ketev (Opal Tapes, Portals editions).