Orion Music Workshop

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world,” a first-class snob once stated. So rightful, he was. We feel so petite when the journey is elite. Like during the concert that Kashual Plastik drops here on cassette. For this release, a visual and material concept was carried directly into the artwork: since the artist performs his concerts illuminated only by a single candle, the cassettes were packaged inside matchboxes — a tribute to that fragile, flickering source of light and the intimate aura it creates. 

The tape features lots of portable power. It was seized by Orion Music Workshop, a project of French musician Tom Val, that oscillates in the mist of free jazz, post-industrial, and experimental electronic ambiances. The captured moment makes one tour on daring tones. We meet Erik Satie wearing new fabrics. We hear shaky vocal samples. There are shades of Dub and heavy bass zones. Ambient calls us too, while echoed voices recite dangerous beliefs. Sheep cry to the moon and choir tones drone. Bernard Parmegiani’s heritage sails around, underneath haunting witchcraft sounds. Medieval melodies for romantic ceremonies. Lost in gone radio frequencies.

We travel far in audio drama. Yet Orion stays close, workshopping a home feeling, screening the big wheel in hallucinogenic light. He makes us ready to drop out — into moods that change swiftly, opening the tiny for a bigger shiny. Language from above, captured on tape loops. Lo-Fi spirits for radical chimes. Ceremonial sensibilities, fashioned for snooping searchers and paranoid lurkers. It’s a workshop that works you, casting out the tiny haze for a juicier space.