Michele Mercure
Beside Herself
Michele Mercure often dreams of music, and in her waking life, reclaims
fragments of these fleeting, floating melodies in her compositions and
sound art. Beside Herself, an anthology of Mercure’s self-produced and
distributed cassettes released between 1983 and 1990, collects these
dreamlike passages and lo-fi nocturnes, preserving the qualities of
discovery and intimacy surrounding their genesis. Mercure’s sound is a porous electronic art that overlaps ambient,
abstract, and industrial se…
Eye Chant
Originally issued in 1986. You can see the sounds her voice makes. The literal depiction of this, a photograph of Michele Mercure with an eyeball in her mouth, is removed in the updated album art. The original graphic elements are left to suspend, speak, and sing across time. In the absence of the decade-specific portraits, the redesigned edition is dislocated from a particular or linear history. Our initial point of encounter is artifactual; a trace in place of a scar. Accordingly, Michele’…