In early 2020, Mc Pherson released her sophomore album, States of Fugue, which DJ Mag praised for demonstrating her »innate talent for melding experimental sounds with the principles of dance music.« With a multimedia approach, Mc Pherson strives to connect sonic and visual aesthetics, frequently in collaboration with visual artist and director Alessandra Leone. In 2020 the duo released the 13-minute AV piece Grounding in Outer Space and also co-founded the imprint SFX, which has released an ongoing collaborative audiovisual composition featuring 43 artists including Aho Ssan, Katie Gately, ZULI, KMRU, and a vinyl 12" from Klahrk amongst others. This composition was premiered online as XquisiteForce.AV at CTM 2021.
Since then, Mc Pherson has assembled several sound installations, performed at international festivals and venues such as Moscow’s Mutabor, Malmö's Inkonst, Madrid's LEV, and Amsterdam's Fiber, and initiated a collaboration with sound artist Jessica Ekomane. The duo's first recording was released in 2021 on Ostgut Ton's Fünfzehn + 1 compilation. This year, Mc Pherson will release their next statement, Abyss Elixir, on Berlin's Pendulum Recordings label.
Mc Pherson also recently embarked on an ambitious project alongside two organizations in Almaty, Kazakhstan, to invite musicians and designers to perform and hold workshops. They also host a radio show on French station LYL and have done guest mixes for Fact, Rinse FM, and Noods Radio.
CTM 2022 X SHAPE mix: Zoë Mc Pherson by CTM Festival
CTM 2022 X SHAPE mix: Zoë Mc Pherson by CTM Festival
01. Brigitte Bardot - Contact
02. Simo Cell - Whispers
03. Kavari - skee with Klahrk (unreleased)
04. Monotronique - First Touch
05. Nia Archives - Forbidden Feelings
06. The Untouchables - CF14
07. Grisha Lichenberger - 0111_05_Z Red
08. DEBBY FRIDAY - FOCUS
09. Exploited Body - Artificial Proximity
10. Emiranda - Real Life
11. Zoë Mc Pherson - Sub town (out March 15th on Pendulum recordings)
12. Razen - Adhîsta Ayîk III
13. Yilan - Lost Signals
14. Rupert Clervaux - Make Nature Speak
15. Zoë Mc Pherson - Power fluids (Pitchless)
16. Zoë Mc Pherson - 022022 touch (unreleased)
17. Sanguis - Smw (unreleased)
18. Best Available Technology - Session 111101
19. Andy Stott - Numb
borshch is a magazine for electronic music on and beyond the dancefloor. Founded in Berlin in 2017 by Mariana Berezovska and Tiago Biscaia, it’s a space to provoke open dialogues and challenge established ideas about making, listening, and dancing to music. In this short interview, Mariana Berezovska speaks to Zoë Mc Pherson about her artistic practice.
Mariana Berezovska: When asked about your creative process, you often mention the rhythms you work with, the rhythm each of us carries, and how these cross and create polyrhythms when we move and interact with each other. How did you feel about the rhythm and our collective vibration when we were separated from each other?
Zoë Mc Pherson: I made a piece about that, actually. Hopefully, it will see the light later this year. I think, weirdly, that by being separated, certain communities have gotten even more in sync with each other and recognised that their needs and desires are simply the same. But some are out of sync—extremely out of sync—and we are still repeating the same human tragedies for a world filled with inequalities that need immediate attention and to be mended!
There is no point in being the loudest rhythm. Destroying others doesn’t enhance oneself. If you’re loud alone, there is no harmony, musicality, or real purpose or enjoyment in being loud. On a positive and parallel note, I can see that a lot more communities have also grown, and we’ve realised even more how much we mean to each other.
MB: You’ve mentioned that it’s crucial for you not to hold on to the past and keep surprising yourself and the people around you. Get comfortable in your discomfort. What was the latest happening/ music production/ collaboration/ creative idea where you felt like you left your comfort zone?
ZMP: Getting into the world of spatial sound keeps on surprising me. It can be disorienting and reproduce daily landscapes as we know them. I love it a lot!
I’ve also started curating a monthly club and workshop series with my label SFX in Almaty, Kazakhstan. It is a fresh and exciting collaboration with a new Queer-owned club, bULt, which will kick off in March! So come there, and experience Central Asia, because the community there, its history, and the countries are incredible.
My collaborations allow me to leave my comfort zone. Otherwise, there is no point in doing them. Musically, I’ve started a couple of new ones. For example, Ciarra Black and I have a club EP coming out this spring, with our duo named Carbon 96. We are preparing a few live shows with only analogue equipment, premiering in Athens next month. This really got me out of my comfort zone because now I am almost used to composing odd rhythms, and here we wanted to focus on the club, the trance state, and the focus. Believe it or not, four-to-the-floor is not that bad if there is a little mini-mini twist!
My other main musical collaborator is Jessica Ekomane, with whom I played at Berghain Halle last year for Arte TV. She constantly inspires me to dig further. Together we’re exploring many different surfaces within composition, rhythms, scales, arrangement, synthesis, and patching techniques. It’s a very exciting project! I will be able to share more about this soon.
MB: As a frequent collaborator with other artists and the curator and founder of AV platform SFX, you know how vital the circulation of giving and receiving can be. How important for you is it to feel the support and exchange within your communities? What’s your vision for new sustainable structures within the experimental/avant-garde music scene? And what old structures don’t work anymore, in your opinion?
ZMP: So many structures don’t work anymore. Unfortunately, I don’t know what will make people change their obsession with power and »visibility.« Anyways, I think there are interesting creative cooperatives out there. For instance, the last show I played in Zurich was at Zentralwäscherei, a coop with a large team of young people around 25 years old who are trying to do things collectively. There’s also an interesting new project called SODAA in London. There’s a bunch of collaborative, coop projects or networks kind of everywhere, I believe! Even in the village where I grew up in the South of France, there are many eco-community projects. These changes are happening now, and people are coming together for real and good reasons. And we need this to happen. It’s our reward and energy from all the lockdown pain.
Technically, Discord, Telegram, Signal are bringing a lot of interesting organisations, festivals, and communities to share their thoughts instead of other bigger controlled platforms, bringing back the initial forum vibes and »internet ancestor« instead. I’d also recommend checking the tools for the Regenerative Renaissance [scalable course funded by SEEDS, the regenerative currency, to help onboard civil society onto open-source, decentralised platforms and practices] and maybe your neighbour.
MB: This year’s theme of CTM is »Contact,« the condition that’s been limited in the physical space and expanded into the digital world due to the pandemic. In your mix, you’ve explored the idea of »touch,« the act of coming in contact. How did you approach this exploration? Which sensations did you try to transmit with your music selection? And what was the process of selecting artists and tracks for the mix?
ZMP: With this mix, I’ve interpreted the theme »contact« pretty literally, with a physical and emotional interpretation of touch. First of all, the tracklist is a narrative by itself, so I’d suggest you check it out!
There are different types of touches I wanted to convey through this track selection: a sensual touch, from a light, playful tease to darker and stronger physical feeling, ending more towards ASMR; a variety of textural feelings across the sound design palette; a therapeutic touch, full fast body vibrations (WBV), energetic vibrations, and so on.
Being touched, as well as touching, is part of being alive, clearly. I noticed, during the pandemic, that we’ve allowed or forbidden people around us to come closer (physically and emotionally, therefore too). I explored that emotional idea with »Forbidden Feelings« by Nia Archives and »Focus« by Debby Friday.
There’s also this idea of constantly keeping in touch, and it’s maybe even more »annoying« than before. But also simply losing touch because of different points of view, either political or health-related. And this has been radical lately.
Another path in my mix is this feeling of being touched, but digitally, maybe through VR or fantasy. There’s something about the metaphorical absence/presence of touch and absence/presence of real touch that is intertwined, as if the dynamic of one influences the other. That’s why I picked »Artificial Proximity« by Exploited Body merged with the sarcastic title »Real Life« by Emirand. They are followed by the hidden »Sub Town« of mine, and »Make Nature Speak« by Rupert Clervaux with my track »Power Fluids (Pitchless),« which is a play on words about feeling speechless.
Supported by the SHAPE platform, which is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. Media partner: Borshch.
