The Turin-based non-profit, digital collective, and event series PAYNOMINDTOUS sets forward on their explorations across the margins of digital electronic music with their first compilation release WE NEVER WILL. Gathering 31 artists from across Europe and North America, this 27 track compilation captures the far reaches of contemporary experimental music currently arising out of flourishing IRL and URL underground communities worldwide.
Unifying sonic visions within the realms of hardcore, trap, drum & bass, and digital sound art (to name a few), this album symbolizes the social driving forces of our artistic processes as a tool for mutual aid and support. With all proceeds from the compilation being donated to the Italian single association network B-Side Pride for their Covid relief efforts supporting various LGBTQIA+ communities of asylum seekers, refugees, and sex workers, WE NEVER WILL garners artistic leaders across the globe through a re-imagined idea of the power of music.
Acting as an extension of the already boundary pushing projects PAYNOMINDTOUS has materialized, WE NEVER WILL offers a bountiful array of auditory experiments from artists including Odete, Stasya, Kilbourne, Æthereal Arthropod, Benelux Energy, and so many more.
While the compilation in its entirety sends our eardrums along a journey through the minds and visions of the many artists involved, our attention here at SBVRSV lingers a little while longer on a track contributed by Austria-based artist Antonia XM. DJ, producer, and co-curator of the Viennese label Ashida Park, Antonia XM does not come short of her genre-defying reputation with her track submission “Zelda’s Warning”. Combining abstract sonic textures with melodic synth lines, “Zelda’s Warning” offsets some of the harsher tones of the comp with a subtle melancholia all too familiar to us during these uncertain times. Featuring Princess Zelda’s “Blood Moon” monologue from Breath of the Wild as a central sample within the piece, “Zelda’s Warning” connects a nostalgic undertone of whimsy with a sense of foreboding.
Tapping into a tender soundscape pulsing underneath the harder works Antonia XM has previously released, put on some good headphones and exhale into the intimate message Zelda shares with us for the long journey ahead.
by D. Blavatsky.
WE NEVER WILL is out 17/07/20 on PAYNOMINDTOUS w/ poster designed by K095C. All proceeds (except poster shipping) will be donated B-Side Pride in support of their Covid relief fund for the LGBTQIA+ community. Pre-order here.