Donne Che Corrono Coi Lupi: A Collection Of Works Re-channeling Atavic Energies
Osàre! Editions gives the spotlight to 20 women artists among the most talented in today’s electronic scenes
“Donne Che Corrono Coi Lupi” Album Cover
In the past couple of years, Elena Colombi’s Osàre! Editions has treated us to a slew of high quality records of experimental music, with a great attention to detail in selection and packaging. The label’s twelfth effort, Donne Che Corrono Coi Lupi, might be its most ambitious yet.
The title references Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, a seminal work in post-Jungian psychology, published in 1992. Pinkola Estés posits that the archetype of the Wild Woman, representing instinctual nature and knowledge, has been obscured by the rational cognitive approach that dominates all modern societies. However, her claim is that the part of the psyche that is the Wild Woman still exists though repressed, and ancient fairy tales and stories can provide the teachings needed to access it, know it, and protect it. Pinkola Estés analyses some of these tales to reframe them, extrapolate the hidden teachings, and provide a connection between the ancient knowledge and today’s individuals, so that women can run with the wolves again.
The music, this being a compilation, is very varied. It’s not genre or style that glues the album together, but rather its approach, or better its reference point. The tracks are visceral; deep. Intimately experimental rather than genre-bound or over-constructed. The feeling is that these tracks are instinctual, yet not impulsive.
This sense of viscerality mostly comes from a theme that recurs throughout the release: beyond the single idea behind every track, despite the particular approach of every artist standing out every time, the tracks act as an instrument of connection. All of the artists featured provided a track that links the release’s concept to the present, presumably individual and individually felt, and the past, undoubtedly experienced as a community. Our contemporaneity meets the present of our ancestors. Our identity in-the-now faces our identity as-a-result-of-a-process.
Osare Editions’ Label Boss Elena Colombi
Like ancient fairy tales and legends have been given numerous versions across the centuries, the tracks here are the artists’ version of archetypal ideas, filtered through their vision as modern artists and women.
Ultimately, this focus on personal interpretation of atavic concepts results in an incredible variety in the musical output. There are atmospheric experimentations like the opener, Cucina Povera’s “Liikaa Liimaa”; loops of industro-tribal percussions as in “Aboyá” by Kakubo; snippets of Iranian melodies cut through clangy melodies in “Low” by Maral, while “U” by Mayurashka is a gallop through a forest at night, entrancing with its glitchy accents. There are swirling soundtracks to movies that are yet to be made (“Grip” by Silvia Kastel), intimate lyrics sung in unfamiliar languages (“La Ragazza del 6 Giugno” by Eva Geist, “Pine Seedling” by Elena Colombi and Ece Özel), and it all climaxes into a loud avant-punk experimentation by Fetter.
Overall, there is a lot in this record. You are bound to discover many interesting outputs by many incredible artists from all over the world, put together by a peculiarly vivid fil rouge. A much recommended release to dive into, one that can give you the right inspiration to start off the new year.
Words by Alessandro Cebrian Cobos
