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Jessie Marino, Pinquins, Inga Margrete Aas
Murder Ballads :: Volume II :: The Positive Reinforcement Campaign
€10.40
VAT exempt
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Jessie Marino is a Berlin-based composer, performer, and media artist. Her compositions and performances abstract ideas drawn from all stripes of popular culture and political discourse, girded by a definitively humanistic sensibility rife with equal doses of wit and pathos.
“Murder Ballads Vol II: The Positive Reinforcement Campaign” is the first recorded output from an ongoing band project, launched in 2023, with the Norwegian percussion trio Pinquins (Sigrun Rogstad Gomnæs, Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen & Jennifer Torrence), and contemporary music stalwart bass player / composer Inga Margrete Aas; all artists who are known for challenging boundary notions around genre, and the role of the performer.
“The Positive Reinforcement Campaign” can be said to consist of one part experimental folk, one part Appalachian motet, and one part glitching, noisy, fluttering drone, but luckily, we´re not dealing with a pastiche of isolated references.
Marino uses the language of folk music traditions to witness and retell our current reality through a feminist lens, with traditional American Sacred Harp hymns and murder ballads at the core. Through improvisation, experimentation and group singing “The Positive Reinforcement Campaign” has banded together to stretch out and fill up the containers of these traditional songs - populating them with their own sonic languages to reflect on the horrific stories of now; singing songs about precious entities which are subjected to the brutality of contempt, greed, jealousy, violence and utter disregard.
Guests Emilia Dorr (voice), Weston Olencki (trombone) and Wendy Eisenberg (guitar) further expand the already deliciously rich sonic palette, with idiosyncratic contributions to one track each.
“Murder Ballads Vol II: The Positive Reinforcement Campaign” is the first recorded output from an ongoing band project, launched in 2023, with the Norwegian percussion trio Pinquins (Sigrun Rogstad Gomnæs, Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen & Jennifer Torrence), and contemporary music stalwart bass player / composer Inga Margrete Aas; all artists who are known for challenging boundary notions around genre, and the role of the performer.
“The Positive Reinforcement Campaign” can be said to consist of one part experimental folk, one part Appalachian motet, and one part glitching, noisy, fluttering drone, but luckily, we´re not dealing with a pastiche of isolated references.
Marino uses the language of folk music traditions to witness and retell our current reality through a feminist lens, with traditional American Sacred Harp hymns and murder ballads at the core. Through improvisation, experimentation and group singing “The Positive Reinforcement Campaign” has banded together to stretch out and fill up the containers of these traditional songs - populating them with their own sonic languages to reflect on the horrific stories of now; singing songs about precious entities which are subjected to the brutality of contempt, greed, jealousy, violence and utter disregard.
Guests Emilia Dorr (voice), Weston Olencki (trombone) and Wendy Eisenberg (guitar) further expand the already deliciously rich sonic palette, with idiosyncratic contributions to one track each.
Details
Cat. number: MOT44CD
Year: 2026
Notes:
Release title is mistyped "Murder Ballads :: Volume II :: The Positive Reincorcement Campaign" on booklet front.
1: The lyrics of this song are fragments adapted from Louise Glücks' [sic] poems in the Averno Collection.
2: Instrumental prelude [...] The song is a cover of Dolly Parton's "The Bridge."
5: Miles Davis's classic "In A Silent Way" (1969) - but backwards.
6: The verses of this song use the melody and lyric fragments from one fo my all time favorite folk tunes, "A Few More Years May Roll" by Alice Gerrard and Hazel Dickens.
Recorded by Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard at Flerbruket Studios, Norway.
Supported by the Norwegian Arts Council, Fund for Performing Artists, The Audio and Visual Fund, Lydia Rylling (Donaueschinger Musiktage), Anna Berit Asp Christensen & Anne Maqvardsen (SPOR Festival), and Heloisa Amaral (Ultima Festival).
