THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “There was a space in Kim Gordon’s No Home Record. It might not have been a home and it might not have been a record, but there was a space. Boulevards, bedrooms, instruments were built played, recorded, the voice and its utterances, straining a way through the rhythms and the chords, threaded in some shared place, we met there, the guitar came too, there fell a peal of cymbals, driving on the music. We listened, we turned our back to the walls, slithered through the city at night. Gordon’s words in our ears, her eyes, she saw, she knew, she remembered, she liked. We were moving somewhere. No home record. Moving.
Now we’re listening to The Collective. And thinking, what has been done to this space, how has she treated it, it’s not here the same way, not quite. Really, not at all. On this evidence, it splintered, glittered, crashed and burned. It’s dark here. It’s dark inside. Haunted by synthesised voices bodiless. Planes of projections. Mirrors get your gun and the echo of a well-known tune, comes in liminal, yet never not hanging around, part of the atmosphere, fading in and out, like she says — Grinding at the edges. Grinding at us all, grinding us away. Hurting, scraping. Sediments, layers, of recorded emissions, mined, twisted, refracted. That makes the music.
This shimmering, airless geology, agitated, quarried, cries made in data, bounced down underground tunnels, reaching our ears. We recalled it — but not as a memory, more like how you recall a product, when it’s flawed.
She sings Shelf Warmer so it sounds like shelf life, it sounds radioactive, inside our relationships, juddering, the beats chattering, edgy, the pain of love in the gift shop, assembled in hollow booms, in scratching claps. Non-reciprocal gift giving, there is a return policy. But — novel idea — A hand and a kiss. How about that. Disruption. You could say that Gordon is thinking about how thinking is, now. Conceptual artists do that, did that. I Don’t Miss My Mind. The record opens with a list, but the list is under the title BYE BYE. The list says milk thistle, dog sitter… And much more. She’s leaving. Why is the list anxious? How divisive is mascara? It’s on the list.
She began seeking images from behind her closed eyes. Putting them to music. But we need to keep my eyes open as we walk the streets, with noise cancelled by the airbuds rammed in my ears. quiet, aware, quiet, aware, they chant at me. What could be going through Kim’s head as she goes through yours?”
