The Wheel of Rituals – Contextual Devices and Systems [CM27]

The Wheel of Rituals, ‘Contextual Devices and Systems’ (2026). Concept and art by R.A. User. Digital audio, digital photography (and found footage), music composition, album, two-sided lathe cut recorded and riso print. Duration: 58 minutes (album), 10min 35s (lathe), 24 pages zine. This publication presents two modalities of archaeological inquiry: various items and material remnants salvaged from post-conflict landscape of northern France, and recontextualized digital captures extracted from contemporary popular media. Through processes of cut-up poetry, these temporal artifacts generate new intertextual configurations: audio graphics. The juxtaposition of geographical and media archaeologies functions as a literary methodology for examining conditions of contemporary culture – each fragment serving as contextual device within a speculative system of meaning.

The Wheel of Rituals – Contextual Devices and Systems [CM27]

The Wheel of Rituals – The Wheel of Rituals [V028]

I-F’s Viewlexx label is keeping tight-lipped about this rather fine EP. They’ve offered no details of the artist behind the project – or anything else for that matter – and their promotional spiel consists of one line in Latin. What we can tell you is that it’s a suitably dystopian affair, with the mystery producer launching with a chunk of industrial-tinged experimental electronica (the decidedly fuzzy “Initiation”), before joining the dots between Cabaret Voltaire and Drexciya on the decaying dancefloor electro pomp of “Flight From Reason”. Some will detect a nod towards Test Department on “Refuse Resist” and “Instrument of Power”. Elsewhere, there’s a looser and more alien feel to “Circle of Trust”, while closer “The Wheel of Rituals” is deliciously dark and hypnotic.

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The Wheel of Rituals – The Wheel of Rituals [V028]