Talibam! - Endgame of the Anthropocene (ESP - DISK' 2018)

Endgame of the Anthropocene marks Talibam!’s return to ESP-Disk', a partnership begun in 2009 with the highly acclaimed Boogie in the Breeze Blocks album. Talibam! is a 14-year working unit based in New York City that can be described in various ways -- as a classic keyboards/drums expanded-jazz duo, as Dadaist provocateurs with an innate love for the history of music, as a Fluxus-informed theater troupe, as an electronic ensemble inspired by Stockhausen, or as a rhythm section at the cross hair of agility, speed, punctuation, and intention. Since their inception in 2003, Talibam!’s ultimate goal has been to wed disparate ideologies through proficiency, controversy, inquiry, and compassion. Every Talibam! album attacks from a different angle; Endgame continues this tradition of each new release sounding completely different from everything they've done before,  as does HARD VIBE (ESP5015), which will be released on the same day.

Talibam! has made a geopsychic prediction: after it expires in 2048, the Antarctic Treaty System will be rejected. As the rest of the planet will have been rendered uninhabitable due to wars rooted in overpopulation, global warming, and the relentless exploitation of diminishing resources, human interference and the failure to ratify will lead to international war over the sovereignty and control of Antarctica’s vast resources. Endgame of the Anthropocene is Talibam!’s first cinematic album of through-composed ecogothic geosonics. It is the soundtrack to 2048’s despotic nationalism and crumbling international infrastructure, underscoring an eco-mercantilistic tragedy and the desperate plundering of the last pristine landscape on Earth. This inevitable destruction of Antarctica’s purity marks the global-environmental endgame of the Anthropocene.

Endgame of the Anthropocene is a dystopian sonic pronouncement of failed socio-environmental memes, and features Talibam!’s emergence into hyperkinetic rhythm-based instrumental/ electronic music. Syncopation via polyrhythmic electronic drum and synth pads create corporeal dance floor beats that would make a super computer perturbed. Kevin Shea is a master of cyber swing and ecowar rhythm — on this record, he keeps it android yet anthropoid, like Aphex Twin meeting a hologram Phil Collins.

Keyboardist Matt Mottel anchors wide sweeps of analog synthesis — his sonic palette oscillating between the Silver Apples, Sun Ra, and Arca via an Arduino beta bass drop. This music is hallucinatory composition — electronic muzik via an ethnographic sonic landscape influenced by Parmegiani, Don Cherry, Front 242, Hailu Mergia, Vangelis, Suicide, Islam Chipsy, Stockhausen and DJ Shadow.

01. "Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only" (Article 1) 11:56

02. Human Interference and the Failure to Ratify 4:08

03. Reign of Primordial Tenure on the Ice Shelf 3:01

04. The Telegenic Annexation of Territorial Expanse in the West 2:03

05. Obsequious Resources Duly Exploited De Novo 5:05

06. Breach of Ecology on the Seabed (Biodiversity in Shambles)1:51

07. Cost-Effective Drilling Enabled by Pioneering Technologies and Warmer Climates in the Southern Ocean 6:10

08. RISE OF THE DEFENDERS OF ANTARCTICA 4:03

Matthew Mottel: Mini Moog, Midi Synths, Yamaha CS1x, Roland Juno 1, Roland Lucina, Arp Solus

Kevin Shea: drums, MIDI Marimba Lumina

Preston Spurlock: cover art