Soundwalk Collective
With Charlotte Gainsbourg, featuring Atom™, Lyra Pramuk,Paul B. Preciado and Willem Dafoe‘LOVOTIC’
Double clear vinyl / download / stream
Analogue FoundationApril 1st 2022
Written and conceived by Stephan Crasneanscki, ‘LOVOTIC’ is a concept album by Soundwalk Collective,
composed in collaboration with lauded actress and singer/songwriter Charlotte Gainsbourg, Featuringveteran techno stalwart Atom™, rising singer/composer/performance artist Lyra Pramuk, celebrated actor
Willem Dafoe, and writer/philosopher Paul B. Preciado, the album will be available from April 1st via the new
Berlin-based Analogue Foundation.
Inspired by a relatively new field of research that seeks to explore and develop the possibilities of sexual andemotional relationships – and even love – between humans and robots, ‘LOVOTIC’ interrogates theimpulses, ideas, and needs underlying this phenomenon. The project ventures into a future where sex,intimacy and desire are reformulated through the connection of humans, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
In an age of such hybrid entanglement with the machine, human identity requires the construction of newforms of intimacy, gender, and sexuality. At present, however, such technologies are primarily used toproduce programs of limited sexual iterations that do not question the preformatted categories of gender andsexual orientation. In contrast, on ‘LOVOTIC’, Soundwalk Collective ask whether the future of sex andsexuality could instead be an exponentially expanding kaleidoscope. Where does the impulse of preference
come from? What sets of words from our vocabulary can be communicated to the AI mind to generate a new
identity for desire? Could the machine be another technology that brings us closer together?
Sonically ‘LOVOTIC’ is unidentifiable, artificial, and genuinely futuristic, occupying an amorphous
androgynous netherworld at the borderlands between biotic and android. Traditional musical signposts are
virtually non-existent, instead offering a mercurial, formless sound which mirrors the flourishing of gender
fluidity it suggests could be on the horizon.
The production tangibly evokes the odd, rubbery textures of faux flesh, the slick virtual glide or glitchy
mishaps of software, and the sleek shine of hardware. Gleaming sound design creates shard-like surfaces
redolent of Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ‘Glass’, the slippery stretched sonics Gabor Lazar, and theunsettling dark ambience of TOWERS and Hallmark ‘87.
At turns intimate and inviting, with whispering-in-your-ears ASMR vocals evoking blissful, heightened sexualstates, within ‘LOVOTIC’ there’s optimism, but also unease; As well as the positive, it implies the negative
ramifications of technology. At points a synthetic siren’s call appears to lure the listener to a darker place,with audio malfunctions suggesting dystopian science. Voices morph from gentle to distorted – a glitch in thesystem causing the mask to slip, like virtual lizards – ‘They Live’ or ‘V’ (?), for the metaverse age.
Here, Charlotte Gainsbourg invokes a being of unknown identity – an artificial eve, the oracle and the portal– speaking from an unspecified time in the future. The voices of Atom™, Lyra Pramuk and Willem Dafoe
weave in and out of Charlotte’s, often overlapping, merging into one another, expressing the entity of a being
that’s ephemeral and in constant flux, oscillating between the natural and artificial. The record’s otherbonafide singer, Lyra Pramuk’s delivery alternates between spoken word, operatics and partiallyunintelligible language.
A multi-media project, ‘LOVOTIC’ also features the work of writer, philosopher and curator Paul B. Preciado– a leading thinker in the study of gender and body politics. Paul contributes a post-apocalyptic, quasi
scientific and fictional text, which adds further fantasy, artistic and intellectual depth, augmenting thelistener’s experience. Like all the best Sci Fi, his words seem prescient, describing what could become alikely reality in the future. Paul performs his written texts on the opening and closing tracks of the album;‘The Age Of Mutation’ (in Spanish) and ‘Primate Love’ (in English).
‘LOVOTIC’ is available as an artist edition double LP pressed on transparent vinyl, featuring a handengraving on each side. It includes a 16-page booklet containing lyrics and painted artwork, both byStephan Crasneanscki.

--Soundwalk Collective present ‘LOVOTIC’ exhibition/audio installation, from February 2nd - July 15th@ FOROF, Foro Traiano 1a, Rome.
--Soundwalk Collective is an experimental sound collective helmed by Stephan Crasneanscki in collaboration
with Simone Merli, which operates in a continuously rotating constellation of sound artists and musicians.
The Collective’s approach to composition combines anthropology, ethnography, non-linear narrative, psychogeography, the observation of nature, and explorations in recording and synthesis.
Distinguished collaborators include Patti Smith, Nan Goldin, Anoushka Shankar, Philip Glass, Charlotte
Rampling, Isabelle Huppert, Wim Wenders, Nina Kraviz, Werner Herzog, Sasha Waltz, Mulatu Astatke, JeanLuc Godard and, posthumously, Jeanne Moreau.
Soundwalk Collective have performed live and exhibited at cultural institutions including Opéra de Lyon,CTM Festival, KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Barbican Centre, Berghain, Centre Pompidou, Mobile Art byZaha Hadid in Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York; MUDAM, MuCEM, New Museum, Palazzo Reale in Milan, La
Triennale, Funkhaus, documenta14, Manifesta12, FOROF - Rome. More information available here.
‘LOVOTIC’ credits:
•••••
••
•

Artistic Direction: Stephan Crasneanscki
All music written, composed and produced by Soundwalk Collective
Additional production: Stan Neff
Arrangement: Simone Merli, Atom™, Stan Neff
Mixed by Atom™
Voices: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Atom™, Lyra Pramuk, Paul B. Preciado, Willem Dafoe
Lyrics: Stephan Crasneanscki, except ‘The Age Of Mutation’ and ‘Primate Love’ by Paul
B. Preciado. ‘Lovotic’ also by Atom™
Artwork by Stephan Crasneanscki‘LOVOTIC’ track-list:
A1. ‘The Age Of Mutation’A2. ‘Lovotic’
A3. ‘The Future Of Sexuality’
B1. ‘Central Position’B2. ‘I Am For You’
B3. ‘Spiders Legs’
C1. ‘Orgasm Is The Last Frontier’C2. ‘Reverse Discourse’
C3. ‘Blessed Are The Lovers’
D1. ‘Empower And Enhance’
D2. ‘Primate Love’

www.analoguefoundation.com

www.soundwalkcollec ve.com
www.languageofsound.com

tiContact duncan@9pr.co.uk and james@9pr.co.uk