Cotton Ferox, being the sum of Swedish artists Carl Abrahamsson and Thomas Tibert, is a direct continuation of their previous joint experiments in the group White Stains (1987-1994).
Between 1989 and 1992, they played together in White Stains and produced three highly acclaimed albums. Tibert moved on to produce sampling products, sample CD/CD-ROMs that have been both technically and artistically groundbreaking and market leaders, through his companies Polestar Magnetics, Sounds Good, Sounds Even Better and the current 93 Bits. He is also the founder and creator of the highly acclaimed Online Sample Subscription Service www.primesounds.com.
Abrahamsson worked with White Stains between 1987 and 1994. In 2000, a solo album made under the guise of ”Oiling Noregs vs Deform Project” was released through his own art magazine BULT. In between musical shapes, Abrahamsson has also worked with writing, photography and painting.
In 2000, Tibert and Abrahamsson decided that it was time to make some new music. With a united vision of Lee Perry meeting Martin Hannett in a swimming pool of lysergic sodapop, they have set out to create music that’s alluring and challenging at the same time.
The following text is a message to their fans – and to the world:
”We like music that is resonant with the human spirit. We like music that inspires dreams, be that daydreams or those firmly attached to the realm of the night. We like music that evokes spaces and mysteries, times and truths. We like music that confuses and clairifies at the same time. We like music that pierces and pads up at the same time. We like music that swings in all directions and is perfectly balanced and still at the same time. We like music right now from a totally different time. Music of the future from past times, still vibrating through harmonies and rhythms – clashing echoes of future times.
Some tones can’t be heard and some notes can’t be seen. Cotton Ferox certainly don’t care. What’s there to be used will be used. What’s there to be heard will be heard. And, perhaps, even listened to.
Genuine expressions have a value that lasts. Non-genuine expressions are caught in the temporal prison cells of human culture. Cotton Ferox’ music and any ideas presented in the music are ALWAYS there for the taking – we graciously provide tonal vibrations for listeners long dead, as for those about to be born.
Cotton Ferox promote music that sets the human spirit free. That’s why we endorse keeping the non-genuine expressions and their creators behind locked tonal bars. As Royal Knights in the past, we are willing to fight for our musical ideas and ideals. Our electronic and other swords will lovingly mow down the musical polluters of the Universe, to make way for more dreams and more experiences of pure music.
Cotton Ferox love and live for the harmony of the spheres and actively strive to integrate that harmony in thought and deed in the music that’s issued. The music is not issued as easy listening for hip consumers with a liking of the weird. Our music is issued as a cleansing agent for all cosmic spheres. We want to tune and turn the Universe right again and we will not give up until the work is done.”
Cotton Ferox have also summed up their philosophy very well in their own manifesto:
“Definition? No. Explanation? No. Why not? No.
If anything, Cotton Ferox is the little piece of cotton used in desinfecting the spot where the lethal injection goes in. An example of hypocritical humanism. We’re going to have you killed within ten minutes but we want to make sure, for your own sake, that you don’t catch an infection from the hypodermic needle.
As for the music, we live in a sphere of contrasts. Soft beats, hard scapes. Hard words to soft structures. Soft whispers to ravaging whipping. Cotton Ferox is the wonderful cloud in the blues ky when you’re lying down on the grass, your head spinning on LSD. It’s also the second half of the film ”Cannibal Ferox”.
As you listen, don’t remember. As you listen, don’t expect what the next sound will be. You won’t find it. There will be a microupheaval of your expectations. Not because we necessarily want you to be squeezed through a transcendental process of annihilating good and evil. But because we want you, honestly and sincerely, to enjoy more. To enjoy the music more. The words. To enjoy yourself more. And us.
Open for suggestion. Open for collaboration. Open for being open 24 hours.
To say that Cotton Ferox is a trip would be to taint the experience with past ghosts and future speculations. We simply want to move on. Our new realm of research is you. You are our listener as we are your humble provider. Your sound pusher. That’s a big responsibility on both sides of the record. Therefore, we wish you all the best and hope you’ll enjoy Cotton Ferox. From beyond infinity to the point which is… Where the hypodermic needle goes in.
Desinfection?
What’s been presented above can, by some, easily be seen as pretentious hogwash, an intellectual justification for releasing music for genuinely deranged people. But it’s not. It’s just a declaration of total war against everything that’s not truly poetic in spirit. Why waste time and space on the ironical who lack iron? Whose darts of criticism stem from a void of absolute nothing?
And why all of this? Because disintegration paves the way for a total integration and chaos paves the way for a perfect order… On with the show!
With sincere musical and philosophical greetings,
– Carl Abrahamsson and Thomas Tibert, for Cotton Ferox
Stockholm, Sweden, Europe, Tellus 2008.
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