Pharmakon – “No Natural Order”

Caroline Schub

Pharmakon – “No Natural Order”

Caroline Schub

Margaret Chardiet, the New York-based experimental noise artist who records as Pharmakon, has announced plans to follow up 2014’s unrelenting Bestial Burden with the new album Contact, and we’ve heard the early track “Transmission.” Today, Chardiet has gifted the world with another song from the album. It’s called “No Natural Order,” and it’s about how the continued existence of the human race doesn’t really matter at all. The seven-minute track combines gut-scraping electronic drones with feedback skree and Chardiet’s own howled vocals. Below, listen to the track and read what Chardiet has to say about it, via NPR.

Chardiet writes:

With “Natural Order” defined as the concept that humans have an inherent right (and therefore implied responsibility) to continue the human species, which claims humanity as the center of everything in existence — the sole sentient being, master of the universe — I argue that there is NO NATURAL ORDER (and no positive law, and no divine law). That there is no single true history or truth; that all societies, all systems of law, all systems of logic, are constructs that may be deconstructed. We own and are owed nothing. Our existence is chance by nature. No better than a hog or slab of stone. Just cells in a virus.

My interest in making this argument is to point out that if humans could relinquish their ridiculous dream of ownership over the “right” of existence, that they can also relinquish their ridiculous hopes of control over one another. I believe the theory that humans are the chosen custodians of the universe is toxic, and inevitably leads us to the conclusion that in fact some of us have more of a right than others. That this is the source for much of our struggle of power over each other. To stake our claim, find our place. To give our lives meaning over others. If we accept that it’s all meaningless, perhaps we could stop cannibalizing ourselves, and ironically have a chance of surviving as a species. Not that it matters if we do.

Contact is out 3/31 on Sacred Bones.

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