Words by David C. Obenour
One of the most important cultural voices of Italy in the 20th-century, Pier Paolo Pasolini was a poet, writer, actor, playwright, and film director. From his modest upbringing, his intellect refused to fit within any single ideology. He was openly gay, a “catholic marxist”, critical of the ruling bourgeoisie and the Mafia, as well as the “anthropologically middle-class” student movement. At age 53 his body was discovered on a beach in Ostia – the target of a brutal abduction, torture, and murder that remains a cold case. To this day, there are those who still seek answers.
“Siamo tutti in pericolo,” or “we are all in danger” were Pasolini’s last words from his final interview. Seeking to provide witness and company at Pasolini’s end, Karen Jebane as Golem Mecanique has taken these words for her album of the same name. Centered on the haunting sound of her drone box and singular voice, the “little mass” presented is steeped in reverence, unease, wonder, and a deep beauty.
Off Shelf: Connecting with the art of Pier Paolo Pasolini in your early teens, what impression has remained with you all this time? What has evolved?
Karen Jebane: The understanding of the whole message, his dedication to speak to one’s heart. When I was young it was like a Stendhal syndrome. It was a crush, a passionate stroke. Pasolini was a answer to my personality that did not fit well with family rules, societal rules, school rules. He taught me that I was right to hang on in my own world. And it stayed. It evolved in a strong path dedicated to art and struggle against idiocracy. Pasolini was a wild horse who comforted me in the need of wrath.
OS: What inspired you to now record this album based on his works? What about him do you see as relevant to our here and now?
KJ: Pasolini is, and always was, a land of understanding. Recording this lp came like a need, an urge, a epiphany. It was time to give back what Pasolini’s art built for me. His poetry, his vision, his political vision – nothing faded. All of his opus is relevant. The wrath is necessary. The radicality is eternal. It is not the first album I made about him, though. I composed my own version of Medea directly bound to his movie and how it moved me.
OS: How did you seek to connect, celebrate, or exemplify that personal connection through this music?
KJ: I guess I listened to the deeper of my soul. I am quite mystical and I made a mind connection with him as if i was doing a spirit seance. It looks like I am quite weird too! [laughs] But I really tried to put myself on the beach he died, to put myself on the streets of the city of Roma he walked, to see with the gouged eyes of his Oedipus. In my music I always impersonate the main character: Antigone, The fates or the aeterna oscura. My music is a mean to a kind of transcendance. So I became Pasolini, I became his last night, I became the sorrow after his death.
OS: Could you describe the album cover? How did you choose it and what you like about it as the visual accompaniment to this album?
KJ: It was Stephen O’Malley idea to ask Julien Langerdorff to realize the art cover. He is an artist using art collages in a very aethestic and sacred way. The cover was from one of his silkscreened pieces and I really had a crush on this bloody nun. This figure is sacred but also disturbing. She is a no eyes entity and this complexity and the structure of the artwork really fits with my mystical way of being and composing.
OS: Could you tell us about the field recording you have at the start of the album?
KJ: The sound of the beginning is my instrument playing without the strings on. We hear the motorized wheel and all the mechanics. My instrument is an electric processed hurdy gurdy. But she – I talk about her not “it” – can be played in acoustics and when it happens we can hear all the wooden body, the sound of the wheel. It is a more organic way.
OS: What about it did you like for setting the mood for the album?
KJ: The mood was very concerned! [laughs] It became a challenge to honor Pasolini. And it took times because I recorded it and then erased it . And I recorded it again – all the tracks – and erased it a second time. I made three different albums before being satisfied. It has to be a perfect mass. The difficulty was also that for the first times I did shorter tracks, like in a standard lp. It took me time to be precise in few minutes. To invoke all the sacred and the invisible in six minutes when I usually took twenty minutes minimum.
OS: What is the sound clip from “Il giorno”? Why did you choose to use it as you did and as part of that song?
KJ: The sound comes from the breaking news the evening of the discovering of Pasolini’s body. It was interesting for me to put this death in the real world. To be named is to be real. And then, you really know that death came in our continuum. I guess it was a national shock at this time. Alive, Pasolini was a social media personality – before social media existed. He was on television shows, in the newspapers, invited to debate on Italian society. And suddenly people are eating their meal with the television on and they hear this same voice telling them that Pier Paolo Pasolini has been murdered. Not that he is dead but that he has been murdered. It’s not the same thing. It puts darkness and cold in the moment.
OS: I have my own love for it but can you describe what appeals to you about the sound of a sustained drone?
KJ: The drone are the gates of invisible. The drone is for me the way to reach another dimensional plan. Deeper, darker, sacred and inescapable. My perception of drone is bound to my instrument. She is a vessel. She is the road to this never-ending path. Even when I work with the guitar it turned to drone. It is a comfort zone I do not want to leave. I see mountains and dark oceans, I feel strong wind and endless walls. I see the forest and the cathedral I want to be.
OS: In the fading seconds of Le lacrime de Marie at the end of the album there is a haunting repeated note – almost sounding like a plucked instrument. It’s interesting because it just comes in as the song and the album fades. It struck me as meaningful as an ending – could you talk about how the album closes for you? The impression you were hoping to leave listeners with?
KJ: This sound comes from when I put off a string. And I was a little clumsy and it mades this awkward sound that sounds almost like a vinyl crack. I found it interesting to leave it and not cut it. It closes and opens the album. The album began with the mechanics and it is closed with this sound. With this little sound we are not totally over with Pasolini. We are still with him. I did not want to close the door. There is still a little light passing through. The little sound is like a lullaby that opens something else, hidden in our mind and subconscious.
OS: Have you performed this music live? Can you describe or compare that experience to other performances?
KJ: I worked on a live version of the album and it was the most difficult thing of all my music life. I usually don’t play my albums live because in the recorded version there are several voices and even several drones of the same instrument. But I thought it was an interesting challenge to make it live.
The difficulty came from the several backing voices I could not make on stage. In Siamo tutti in pericole there are tracks where I make four differents singing voices. I did not want to use sampler or whatever on stage so I needed to slightly change the track and reach something coherent and not boring. The short tracks form was also a challenge because I was not use to it. But it worked! It transformed the album in a live version that sounds like forgotten traditional music.