Tag Archives: tension

Luna’s Dogma


Luna’s Dogma

Lyrics were written and spoken by the French image slayer Dorianne Wotton.

Tension. Tension is the leitmotif of Luna’s Dogma.

Firstly, the way the track is built reflects tension with harsh words interspersed with naive music. Then the sound itself tries to render tension by the use of static as background noise. This reduces the violence of words by giving them a ghostly and ethereal feeling while giving a disturbing aspect to the music. That aspect contrasts with its simplicity, as if it came from the background of a nightmare. Finally, the tension is also created by the juxtaposition of several spoken elements spatialized so that the listener is trying to follow all of them at the same time which dissolves the meaning of each of them into une bouillie de mots, or word porridge. This tension is also that of an ascetic mystic, an anchorite, which seeks to achieve a celestial spirituality while feeling trapped in his earthly body.

The text, written and spoken by Dorianne Wotton, is an illustration of the “æsthetic of desolation”, as defined later by Dorianne Wotton and Exomène, that underlies both their respective individual and collaborative works since 2004.

The sampled spoken word of Dorianne Wotton from this track translated to English:

I am a heretic.
What enjoyment heresy can give us.
I am the ascetic of another mysticism, the priestess of another dogma.
What happiness, what sublimation, what transcendental moments my dogma gives me.
Behind the apparent barbarity of the acts that my almighty cult makes me do, there are short, too short moments that bring me closer to an impenetrable and indefinable ideal. The ascent to another spirituality far from pain, greed, emptiness. Agony for the common man, an orgasm for my emotional being.
I dream of another reality and perfection before I leave.
I want to live before I die.
Exalting my soul, I desert my body and especially the passing of time that ravages everything.
Like an anchorite, I hate my body and try to take refuge where no one can reach me.
Torn between inner violence and contemplation that brings me peace and serenity I chose to denigrate my body to feel the purity of my soul,
As required by my own religion.

The entire August 2003 essay by Dorianne Wotton is available in full on Exomène’s anthology profile page.

French artist Exomène is a soundsmith and digital apothecary.

A soundsmith because he works sounds like a potter his clay, or a blacksmith his metal: hammering, stretching, twisting sounds until they fit all together into a coherent piece of music.

As a digital apothecary, his approach is quite the same: playing with an abstract material as if it was physical in a more experimental way. The sound in itself is no longer triturated but what generates it is subjected to several techniques: data-bending, generativity, algorithm, glitch…

These two approaches stem from the same mysticism that holds abstract and physical materials are the same thing in different realms.

Follow Exomène via
Anthology Profile


Magick, Music and Ritual 6, the Winter 2013 anthology album from the Hermetic Library
Hermetic Library Anthology Project – Magick Music and Ritual 6