Look, I’m not up on my Kong lore (that whole narrative just doesn’t do it for me), but wasn’t King Kong a misunderstood animal that was captured, removed from his home, and transported to New York City for the entertainment of rich white jagbags? That doesn’t really sound like a thing I’d want to “conquer,” but I guess if the gigantic ape functioned more as a metaphor for seemingly insurmountable life obstacles, then it makes a little more sense. Still, I feel really bad for that monkey. He had it so unfair.
I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise for me then that the idea of “Conquering King Kong” really does serve as a metaphor here, as RNL, aka Berlin-based Jesse Farber, has dug through archives of material he recorded as far back as 1984 and as recently as 2019. What better way to process the passage of time and the buildup of psychic baggage than by sifting through the past and processing it (sometimes to an insane degree) until it all makes sense to you in the present in some form? That’s what Farber does: he tackles the King Kong of his past and wrestles that great beast to the ground until he can live with it.
You hear that, naysayers? He COMES TO TERMS AND LIVES WITH the monkey. Poor movie monkey, shot down by helicopters and whatnot.
“Conquering King Kong” itself is a fascinating listen, as the tape is split into two lengthy suites with an intermission (“Interregnum”). “Eyeholes” begins with some excellent drone before it builds in intensity and volume, finally dropping out and breaking into warped rhythmic passages, finally ending on spectral ambience. “Chopping Off Every Finger” drops right into the rippling ambience, processed sound sources spiking and receding, then drifting through the ghosts of sonic architecture. Speaking of ghosts, digital squirts appear through a digital mist by the digital end, sounding like Pac-Man’s nemeses on the prowl.
RNL sounds like he’s conquered his past, his “King Kong,” by the end of this tape. Now let’s just hope he doesn’t get marooned on Skull Island for any length of time.
“Conquering King Kong” is available in an edition of 100 from RNL / VONCONFLON.
This is almost assuredly what I’ve been waiting my whole life for. This is it: that moment when my entire body breaks down into its constituent atoms, the electrons holding everything together losing their charge, allowing the building blocks of my body to drift apart and expand outward, just like the universe.
“Each speck of dust is a world within a world within space.” Ain’t that the truth, Primary Mystical Experience. Ain’t that the truth. If you think about it, it’s all about perspective, about the relation of one thing to another. We’re all hurtling through space – as a sentient human being, I perceive size and motion and self and relate that to the rest of the universe, however daunting and overwhelming that is. And it is daunting and overwhelming, so much so that I myself can be considered a speck of space dust, just as the specks of space dust that make up my body are also specks of space dust. Same goes for Mike and Dave and Joe B, maybe Ian. Not Jamie though – Jamie is pure light.
And that’s where Primary Mystical Experience comes in. PME adds sound to the dissipation, to the expansion, to the space in between. Zooming in on miniscule particulate floating through space that would be utterly unperceivable in any circumstance – well, except in this one, in our imagination – PME explores the infinity of space and time through the unlikely encounter. As the glistening synthesizers fill our mind and enhance our senses, we’re able to explore with him the minute details of existence and ponder the secrets of the universe – “secrets” here meaning size, distance, probability … basically anything math-related that plebs like me have no business contemplating.
Still, we are human, are we not? We contemplate what we want.
“Space Dust” assists in the contemplating. It provides the backdrop for deep meditation and introspection. It wraps us a in a pressurized cocoon so we can travel through the vacuum of space, zero-g, just floating there with nothing but pinpricks of starlight to keep us company. This is it – this is how we get out there too, how we experience it. All while staying safe here on terra firma of course.
