Anchored at the end of the line of the rust belt's westward wing span is the artistic hotbed of Oakland. Bayside multimedia purveyors of innovation fusing the functions of artistic constructs together to create new synthesized forms and arts; the East Bay has remained steadfast as a collective of eclectic communities that continue to inspire the way the surrounding world sees, thinks and feels in new and different ways. Cue the duo Primal Wound, a synergetic pop phenomenon comprised of Charlemagne Charmaine and Paul Korte, who employ psychic approaches inspired by dreams, Gnosticism and mystical elements to create consciousness expanding fantasias. Riding the hypnotic rays of vaporwave-styled hyper beams of light — Primal Wound plug into the vacuum tube circuit boards of the mind and spirit to revisit the retro subterranean tributary channels of the subconscious on the debut of "Disintegration". Complete with an underground 80s-esque visual supplied by Photoevaporation, Charlemagne and Paul take the audience into the spectrum carnivals of light where the moving images separate and break — catching and captivating the eyes, ears and perceptions of the beholders into the breaking static dissolve of the television picture fade.

"Disintegration" swirls about in the mind, spinning like the specter and aura of a lost 4AD release. Primal Wound taps the new romantic wells that smelts together the classic cassettes and compact disc jewel cases of yesterday’s college radio chart topping hits in an amalgamated neo-synthesis. The video is styled like the dial switching effects of an analogue black box scrambler, flipping the illicit cable coaxial signal into an A/V blur of colors, distorted and jagged shapes shown both completely and in cracked, segmented fragments. Primal Wound bridges the places where our connection to antiquated tech and analogous arts both intersects and diverges like the static splintered dissolves and animated effects found via the media and console appliances that exist beyond the pale of digital ubiquity. The connection and disconnection felt between ourselves and the spectacle of the artifice in the age of mechanical and manufactured reproductions are conveyed through sensations of sounds, visions and the shining atmospheric, environmental luster of the ineffable.

Char and Paul from Primal Wound provided a privy reflective manifesto on the formation and creation of “Disintegration”:

The song, 'Disintegration' is about disintegration in many forms and it’s also deeply influenced by vaporwave and Mark Fisher's cultural theories about Capitalist Realism and Hauntology. His idea’s deeply moved me and colored my thoughts when I discovered vaporwave around 2015.

I was thinking of the concept of planned obsolescence as a disintegration of an object’s actual worth. Planned obsolescence means products are created with an expiration date in mind and the purpose is not to be the best most well made item, but it’s created to eventually become obsolete or break. The result is that a new better version is always needed and capital keeps coming in.

I was also thinking of the disintegration of culture, (something I feel we’re experiencing right now with everyone living online and idea’s being so Borg-like hivemind.) In the vein of Capitalist Realism, the authentic movement of cultures has been pushed to a pinterest-y, memeable amalgamation of everyone's collective ideas, so authentic grassroots artistic movements are hard to come by. Everything is commodified and it feels unescapable, like there’s no other option besides this capitalist way of consumption.

It feels like a loop you can’t escape — like having to always get the new phone or whatever the tech industries are pushing at the moment. And that metaphorical loop we're stuck in is basically the essence of what vaporwave addresses in its music and aesthetics. There’s this feeling that we can’t escape postmodernism, or pastiche (an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period), so everything is a meme, copy’s of copies, and nostalgic references to the past. The feeling that everything’s been done before, that nothing actually fresh and new artistically happens anymore (though, I’d argue vaporwave aesthetics are still alive and thriving. But honestly, vaporwave is still just a product of postmodernism anyways.

Writing the song, I wanted to sonically reflect that feeling in the looping keyboard in the verses. Kinda like a record skipping or tripping over yourself but it never melodically resolves. It starts out with this crazy ad for some phone company I found online where a guy is literally saying, No getting away, from the network that's always watching, everywhere. Paul and I manipulated and pitch shifted it as a little nod to vaporwave. The end has another commercial we added and sonically warped.

The video was created by Photoevaporation, a glitch video artist I came across online that is making some really different looking works then other glitch stuff I’ve seen. We sent them source video and they created this insane cascading undulation of pixels that looks like it’s consuming our faces (or are our faces disintegrating the pixels?). I was thinking of old school MTV Max Headroom combined with dreams I’ve had. These dreams sometimes have a kind of message transmitted from what feels like a spirit guide. It’s always a face through a TV screen warning me of something, super static-y like they are attempting to contact through dimensions or something. So this video is kinda that.

 “Disintegration” is ultimately a pop song about post-postmodern anxiety and distrust of technology. I question the narrative that technology still implicitly progresses mankind... anywhere. At all. I’m afraid of where we're heading and I wonder if we can break the loop we seem to be in.

Primal Wound's new single "Disintegration" will be available March 26 via Manimal.