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Jul 09, 2019 Pharmakon By Christopher Roberts

Pharmakon (aka Margaret Chardiet) has announced a new album, Devour, and shared its first single, “Self-Regulating System,” as well as a teaser trailer for the album. Devour is the New York City-based artist’s fourth album and is due out August 30 via Sacred Bones. Check out “Self-Regulating System” below, followed by the album trailer and its tracklist.

Ben Greenberg (Uniform) recorded the album live in the studio, the first time a Pharmakon album was recorded this way. Each side of the album was recorded as a continuous take.

A press release describes the concept of the album as such: “Like her previous albums, Devour comes with a strong concept that is exorcised throughout the five demolishing tracks on the album, using imagery and language of self-cannibalism as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans. Each of the five songs echoes a stage of grief associated with this cyclical chamber of self-destruction and the chaos surrounding us that leads us to devour ourselves in an attempt to balance the agony.”

Chardiet issued this press release statement about the album: “Devour uses self-cannibalization as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans; on cellular, individual, societal and species-wide scales. In our cells, our minds, our politics, and our species, humans are self-destructing. But this behavior does not happen in a vacuum. It is an instinctive inward response to a world of increasing outward violence, greed, and oppression. Turning these wounds toward ourselves can be seen as an attempt at ‘balancing feedback,’ within a never-ending positive feedback loop of cause and effect. With this view, the blame is placed not within the individual, but with the world they must contend with, and a society that is designed to fail them - to keep them gnashing and wailing, inflicted with an all-devouring hunger that inevitably turns in on the self. Those that pit them against each other grin from the sidelines, bellies full. Those who see beyond the veil need to obscure the horrid sight by any means necessary, but respite is always brief - nothing can dampen the glare from behind the veil. This album is dedicated to all who were lost to their own demise, all who have been institutionalized; whether in prison, psychiatric facilities, or drug rehabilitation. It is for all those ostracized by and isolated from a totality which chews them up alive in a self-cannibalizing caste system. Here, where martyrs, slaves, and pharmakos are not eradicated, but simply called by another name. ‘ABOUT THE SHALLOWNESS OF SANITY’... To be well adjusted in this system is to be oblivious and unfeeling. This is for the rest of us, who understand that chaos, madness, pain and even self-destruction are natural and inevitable responses to an unjust and disgusting world of our own making.”

Devour Tracklist:

1. Homeostasis
2. Spit It Out
3. Self-Regulating System
4. Deprivation
5. Pristine Panic / Cheek By Jowl

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