Kim Gordon, science fiction nihilism

There is a novel without which the new album by Kim Gordon (Rochester, New York, 70 years old) would not be the same.

The new album by Kim Gordon, the queen of

no wave

, the historic co-founder of the noise flagship, Sonic Youth—along with her ex, Thurston Moore—is her second solo album.

Its title is

The Collective

(Matador/PopStock!).

“The title is something I took from that novel,” Gordon says.

The book is Jennifer Egan's new book,

The Candy House

.

One of the powerful, dark—very deep, distorting—songs on the album is called that.

“I don't know, I think the album has a science fiction vibe because of that novel.

Although it is not the only book that has inspired things in me this time.

There is another one, and it is one that I had wanted to read for a long time, and that I finally read:

The Lover,

by Marguerite Duras,” she confesses.

It's an ordinary February morning in Los Angeles.

Gordon is at her house, relaxed and extremely open to talking about all kinds of things.

“I love the new season of

True Detective

.

Jodie Foster is amazing,” she says.

And she too: “I've seen a lot of good cinema this year.

I loved

Poor Creatures

,

but also

Anatomy of a Fall,

and

Hotspot

, and

Fallen Leaves.

It's very curious about

Fallen Leaves

because it is a romantic comedy, but it is a Finnish romantic comedy, with that cursed charm, that sadness."

The talk takes place via video call.

On the wall behind him is a huge poster for the film

Made in USA,

by Jean-Luc Godard, and a handful of small paintings, scattered here and there.

The sun shines.

Why had she wanted to read The Lover for so long?

“Because of the time Duras spent in Vietnam when she was a child,” she responds.

“I spent a year in Hong Kong when I was little.

And she, Duras, was born in Saigon [present-day Ho Chi Minh].

She grew up there and had always been curious about what she said in

The Lover

.

It is a great novel.

The movie is also very good.

I guess in some way it inspired part of the album, and very directly a song, 'Tree House,'” he says.

The song in question is an ethereal and electrifying evocation, a blurred weight, a distorted howl of metal guitars that can't quite find themselves.

And an indispensable piece of an album that, as the English artist Josephine Pryde – a good friend of Gordon – says, sounds, at times, “radioactive” – especially in 'Shelf Warmer', pure disturbing

dub

calm –, and seems to put order to the thought invaded by the present.

Gordon explores the sonic abyss to break preconceived ideas and destroy the norm, all the norms

An order that is pure interference.

Or lists of things to do, or simply things.

As happens in 'Bye Bye', the first single from the album.

The video clip stars his daughter, Coco Gordon Moore.

And what is seen in it is an escape.

The girl running away from home, and then going into places like gas stations to get the things her mother is talking about—toothpaste, a toothbrush—so that the video itself is a kind of short film, or artistic piece.

“Well, the filmmaker [Clara Balzary] is a friend, and she had told me about an idea for a short film that she wanted to do with my daughter, and suddenly it was perfect for the song, so we did it.

She told me that the thing was to think about someone who is escaping from a cult, or from her house.

Since we're in Los Angeles, I told her, she's escaping both things at the same time.

Of her house, and of the sect of life in the suburbs,” she says, and she laughs.

Justin Raisen (Lil Yachty, John Cale, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) is back at the controls—he was already the producer of

No Home Record

, his first solo album, in 2019—and he sounds even more solid here, and in some sense , free.

There are, everywhere, damaged

dub

and

trap

constructions in which Gordon's intuitive word

collages

shine, in their own very dark, opaque way.

“I guess I got a slightly nihilistic album,” he says.

He also says that the composition has been to some extent free.

“I'm not loaded with notebooks composing around, or anything like that.

Sometimes the words just come out of my mouth.

Without further ado.

Other times, I make lists, and I fit them into what Justin suggests to me.

What is interesting on this album is the role of the guitars.

We gave them complete freedom.

He wanted the album to have that spirit.

Something that captured the moment,” he explains.

This despite the fact that there is in it, as in Egan's novel, a touch of the present from a future "so close that it is almost here."

A fictional future in which we are not only being dominated by algorithms, but we are deciding to distance ourselves from ourselves to the point of living the lives of others.

“That's what the book is about.

There is an application that allows you to enter the minds of others, and have access to their memories.

What it asks of you in return is that you upload all your memories so that others can use them,” he explains.

“The title,

The Collective

, is also something that inspired the novel.

Music is a collective to be a part of,” he says.

Something that is being domesticated today.

“If you're lazy you're only going to listen to certain things.

It's difficult to explain the punk concept to today's kids.

“It's not about how you dress, but about not worrying about being part of the status quo,” he says.

In that sense, he values ​​the role of Billie Eilish, who is offering younger people “something different.”

Kim Gordon could be a kind of explorer of the abyss, a sonic abyss that seeks precisely that: to break with any type of preconceived idea, to destroy the norm, all the norms.

“Yes, sometimes, I tell myself that we are making an intervention in the world,” she says.

Before hanging up, she talks about feminism.

'I'm A Man', one of her songs, is “about all those men who believe that feminism has ruined their lives.”

“I joke about Nancy Reagan and the time when men were protectors and saviors, they thought they were

cowboys

!” she says, amused.

“I love it, because it hasn't been feminism that has ruined anything for them, it has been capitalism, and they don't realize it.

Is comic.

Yes, they have lost their role because they have become consumers, and that is how capitalism needs them: dissatisfied, lost.”

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