Liverpool artist Plastercast debuts with BEING, a collection of five audiovisual works, with streaming starting on 13th November. The sender's own warning is that it may be the strangest EP he has ever sent out, but that within it lies something special.
The press release says it combines lo-fi electronics, repetitive vocal fragments, analogue textures, found imagery and cut-and-paste audio collage. It sits somewhere between song, short film and psychological observation, with traces of Dadaist collage, outsider music and early electronic experimentation.
The background is the interesting bit. Plastercast comes from person-centred psychotherapy, and the work of Carl Rogers in particular, so BEING looks at self-actualisation, incongruence and existential uncertainty through repetition and association. Familiar sounds and images get lifted out of their original contexts and put back together as something personal, anonymous and strangely recognisable. In the release's words, a repeated phrase becomes a kind of instruction, and an ordinary image held for slightly too long starts to feel unfamiliar.
A psychotherapist turning his training into a lo-fi collage project is the kind of oddity I'm happy to back here. The track titles alone tell you it's not going to be a conventional EP, and I like that Audio Addicts has room for something this far from the usual single and tour announcement.
The tracklist:
- Let the Marbles Roll
- Penny Lane (I change)
- Out of the Neverworld
- Footy Figures
- Paternal Roles in the Primate World
The works draw on the accidental poetry of the everyday: overheard conversations, obsolete imagery, digital artefacts, imperfect recordings and the small details of ordinary life.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plastercast.mp4/