Evicshen is the project of experimental noise musician, visual artist, and instrument maker Victoria Shen (Trim). She is currently readying her LP Hair Birth for release on July 17th via American Dreams Records, and it will come with a handmade record jacket that doubles as a functioning speaker. “The art is the speaker and the speaker is the art,” she says, before going on to explain:
“The width of a continuous copper coil is modulated as it radiates across the surface of the jacket, rendering the image of my face mid-performance from a show last summer in Kumamoto, Japan. The coil, when connected to an audio amplifier and placed in front of a magnet, turns the material of the cover into an active speaker membrane. The whole thing dances and vibrates in your hands as you listen to the album, as it pushes the particles in the air back and forth to create invisible waves that we perceive to be sound.”
Known for visceral live performances meant to engage location, space, and the human body through sculptural forms of sound as well as visual imagery, Shen has performed around the world including at Boston City Hall, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, ISSUE Project Room NY, DOMMUNE Tokyo, and Petreon Sculpture Park Cyprus. Using an array of self-made synths and invented instruments, the artist also generates visual images during performances using self-authored software.
Hair Birth began with recordings Shen made throughout several weekends using Harvard Universities’ Buchla 100 and Serge modular systems. With hours of recording laid down on the analog synthesizers, the musician began the painstaking process of reassembling the stems into the album’s seven tracks. At times eviscerating and confrontational, Evicshen’s extreme textures of sound are always experienced physically as an act of somatic feeling, as much as they are also a powerful listening experience.
Below you can watch a short teaser from the artist as she demonstrates how the album’s cover also functions as its speaker.
