The Argentine musician Dann Abdala returned with his electronic project Turvia this month releasing his The Mind Of A Mind Handler cassette via the Italian label Infidel Bodies. Conceptual in its approach, this new effort is an exploration of the nature of power in all of its social and psychological manifestations. The artist warns: “You can’t always portray “Orwellian” situations that donʼt have traces of reality.” Identifying this as the condition under which we currently live, a state in which the powers-that-be bend reality to their maleficent will, Turvia further admonishes with the reminder that a people who resign themselves thru their indifference to the machinations of power soon find themselves praising it in exchange for a “precarious subsistence.”
Abdala follows up on this conceptual approach with a sound that blends many aspects of outsider electronic music. A multi-instrumentalist and synthesist, he began the project in 2005 following a more Industrial Rock-oriented approach. Eventually, though, Turvia became a solo outing influenced by “noise, ambient music, darkpop, experimental and a touch of gothic/esoteric art.” This nexus of electronic genres and art, still filtered through his industrial aesthetic, provides a caustic and haunting backdrop for Abdala’s conceptual leanings. He explains: “The Mind Of A Mind Handler goes from a resident narrator to an orator of power.”
Tracing this progression across twelve tracks, the artist also provides a written map that joins his exploration of power to particular tracks on the effort. Using a poetic but poignant language, the artist points to how social forces reduce us into objects of those forces while joining this narrative to the LP’s twelve particular cuts. Recognizing the ease with which his approach might be reduced to a mere narrative trope, “a literary lie to talk about oppression,” he reminds us that the machinations of power he describes are real social/psychological forces at work and their description thru sound and text are the very reason his album exists.
Look for Turvia’s The Mind Of A Mind Handler to come out on cassette with artwork and layout from Infidel Bodies’ Erminio Granata. Pro-dubbed on C-60 tape, the cassette comes in a canvas bag with 2-sided j-card on yellow paper.
