The Labyrinth Of The Straight Line

Written and recorded by Cindytalk between 2013–2015 at Roi Vert, Okamoto, Japan and Thirteenth Floor, London, UK

Film clips on Sea Of Lost Hopes, Lost Unfound and Filthy Sun: Ghost Dance (UK 1983), directed by Ken McMullen

Design/images: David Coppenhall

In praise of The Invisible College

‘The Labyrinth of the Straight Line’ is a compilation of chimerical poetry. Ambiguous haikus of agony, melancholy, obscurity and dissensus are unfolding over time. Walking on the shapeshifting paths of transgression, on the search for new realities since the early 1980’s, Cindytalk's latest release pays homage to their industrial roots, comprising brutalist outbursts in abstract sceneries of beauty and abysmality.

As surreal and introspective as a film by Jean Cocteau, as labyrinthic and enigmatic as a story of Borges, Cindytalk succeeds in spatializing subjectivity. These introverted detournements follow the logic of dreams and form the unsettling soundtrack of an unresting mind. The outcome can be abrasive and balearic at times, but also delicate and melancholic. 'The Labyrinth Of The Straight Line' forms an alphabet of dark and obscure detachment. Acid shivers of a body without organs and convulsive pumps of arteries alternate with poignant murmurs of the past that dissolve in tender shades of hushed despair and graceful debris.

We find ourselves in spaces with walls crumbling down or concaved by glazed mirrors terrorizing the claustrophobic body. From time to time we can hear a disembodied voice, speaking soft and clear like a narrator from a different reality.

Sonic psychogeography between somnambul dark ambient, claustrophobic post-industrial and nightmarish techno. Delightful sketches of escatology.