Of Which One Knows is a collection of works by Natalie Beridze that sit outside the easy categorisation of ‘al-bum’. They are of course, an album, but they are more than that, in that they represent a kind of multiplicity in sound, an accumulation of experience, of emotion, of life, transposed into sound. It is only together that the stories that sit between them might start to be assembled. Spanning a decade and a half, these works chart a trajectory of investigation and curiosity that charts the very edges of Beridze’s intensely personal compositions.
“I’m kissing you now — across a gap of thousand years”. M. Tsvetaeva
“Of Which One Knows”, was written and produced between 2007-2021. Such unreleased material is a quintessential backdrop to an artist’s processes, as it has obviously never landed in any full bodies of work. It does however gain humble significance, which feels approachable, which is about absence and hence always fresh, drifting somewhere between remembrance and obliviousness. I see sound in smells, maps and mischievously put random words in poems, as they provoke pivotal subcon-scious algorithms in me. These tracks are the portrayal of those feelings.
Anterior memories
Layer upon layer
Petrichor - a smell of first rain
In spring
Jupiter florida
I’m in beauty Kentucky
In paradise Miami
I’m in cut off Louisiana
In why Arizona
Sea of moisture moon
I am the memory of
Every blissful moment of the divine process of music-making, that goes back to a sacred process of a child at play - a burning response to the intensity of the neigh to invisible blueness of half-formed ice. The span of time for this music reminds me of my Dad’s studio. Infinite thick wooden drawers that crackle clack, bounce clatter, peal, rattle the same way as before. There is no decay crumbling, perishing or rot in the objects inside. Clippers, liner pens, tracing paper, cutters for grown-ups, unused razors and their tiny spare blade packs, tapes, compasses, leather and metal roll meters, are all intact. Random snapshots, outdated student ids and driving licenses in leather sliders, letters, postmarks, piled up separately in intense small section drawers. All’s in perfect order. All intact. Layouts, house models with tiny tables and chairs and swimming pools with people inside, others by the fire-place, some holding cocktails, others reading books- are very dusty, smelling of glue and cardboard, all intact. Some stacked one on top of another, others unfinished on the modelling table under the stained swinging arm desk lamp. - Natalie Beridze