Epilogue is the concluding passage in SBVRSV’s six year documentation of globalized experimental art and music scenes. Formatted as a compilation release and digital zine, it is divided into 2 parts, each consisting of 9 original music productions contributed by a selection of artists who were involved with SBVRSV or influenced its curatorial vision in some capacity. While several of the artists are Canadian, many acts from a diverse range of international regions were also included with the intention of explicating connections between scenes at the micro and macro level.
Aesthetically, the album is multi-faceted, encompassing a broad spectrum of experimental music styles. The only prompt conveyed to the artists was a series of descriptive, stylistic phrases: “power-ambient, industrial-poetry, hybrid-metal, blackened-club, cathartic-noise, harsh-trap and mystical-doom.” It was left up to the artists’ discretion as to how they wanted to interpret these descriptors.
The album will be released May 6 and is now available to pre-order on Bandcamp. As a preview to the release, the video for MAAY‘s track “ALONE (2gether)” is being premiered below. In it, she profanes the hallowed ruins of a medieval cathedral, performing occult rites and pagan worship.
In many ways, SBVRSV has come to represent a point of convergence, a node within the greater ecosystem of digitally-mediated arts communities. At this point in time, it feels that the project has reached the culmination of its natural life-cycle and while it will not be continuing in its previous capacities, the hope is that it can act as a sort of archive, or snapshot, of globalized experimental art and music culture during the late 2010’s. Perhaps others can find inspiration in its model and build upon it further, carrying the torch of independent culture forward into the future. Certainly, the scene that SBVRSV helped cultivate will continue to evolve in exciting new directions and formations that we anticipate with great optimism. The close of this chapter does not signify the death of a scene but rather, its ever-expanding emergence and growth.
Click here to pre-order the album and read the Epilogue zine below:
Artwork – Riley Gardiner