The tenth album by Zafer Aracagök, philosopher, musician, art critic, and visual artist, is released by Rizosfera.
Aracagök’s latest album, ‘If I Were Happy’, is dedicated to sound experimentation (NUKFM020). It consists of a 2GB USB card with six unreleased musical tracks, a red cardboard envelope with fourteen illustrations represented on seven postcards, two concertina booklets with lyrics, and an unpublished text by Safer.
Aracagök’s musical side is known as SIFIR (Zero) and encompasses a wide range of influences, including noise, industrial, punk, new wave, dream pop, and electronic. These influences blend to such an extent that the Turkish artist’s originality has resulted in numerous well-received albums, including his last two releases for the renowned glitch-noise label Mille Plateaux. In particular, SIFIR’s incendiary proposal traverses the audio dynamite realms of Killing Joke, My Bloody Valentine, and Suicide, with an added touch of art-pop.
The lyrics, featured in the inner booklet, describe strong existentialism tainted by unhappiness and diversity, using bitter sarcasm and dark humor to depict a Neanderthal-like world still steeped in violence and hatred towards minorities.
The 14 images created by Zafer on the seven full-color postcards evoke a strong sensation that immediately connects the eye to the brain, creating a mood of unease and anguish. Zafer uses a raw illustrative style with mixed media techniques, influenced by Francis Bacon’s painting styles and contemporary collage art.
The artistic world presented by Zafer / SIFIR is bold and rich with literary, poetic, painterly, musical and philosophical influences, including a new unpublished philosophical text entitled “Clamour”. Zafer navigates ably between inspirations from Pavese, Pasolini, Beckett, Bacon, L. Anderson, Deleuze, and Killing Joke. A must-have for the new European art scene and experimental music landscape.
