In 2014, tQ favourites Grumbling Fur Time Machine Orchestra (the creators of our album of 2013) collaborated with the artist Mark Titchner, producing an interdisciplinary installation at South London’s Dilston Grove studio. The installation, titled ROSE, represented a meeting point between Grumbling Fur’s immersive psychedelia and Titchner’s film and text-based visual practice. On 27th May, the music from ROSE will be released as a 12" single on OMNE, a new sound and text publishing project from Emptyset’s Paul Purgas. The single will be cut onto clear laser-etched vinyl, and will feature artwork by Titchner. For now, you can stream ROSE at the above link. Stay tuned for news of Grumbling Fur’s new LP for Thrill Jockey, due late this year.
tQ’s Luke Turner recently spoke to Paul Purgas about the single, the original installation and OMNE. Read the interview below.
When did you first encounter Mark and the ‘Fur?

Paul Purgas: Mark and I met ten years ago now, when we organised a show with him at Arnolfini a gallery I was working at in Bristol at the time. Then a few years later we worked again on a project called Narcissus Trance that I curated with Shama Khanna in a space in East London. It was an exhibition with contributions from the painter Wade Guyton, Mick Harris from Napalm Death and the writer Tom McCarthy, we showed a sound and text based piece by Mark called English Language Golem. It was around 2012 that I saw Mark and Alexander Tucker perform together at the annual music festival at Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridge and really enjoyed it, so I sensed back then something else would emerge out of that initial collaboration.
Why did you decide to put out ROSE? Did you see the original installation? Why did it move you?

PP: I’d been to Dilston Grove a few times before. It’s an amazing gallery space in South London, a rare example of a poured concrete church with a superb programme that exists outside of the commercial machine of the art world. The installation of ROSE filled the space with multiple screens and was accompanied by this soundtrack as a 7.1 surround sound version. The installation turned the gallery into a pulsing, euphoric and subtly unsettling merger of sound, image and text, like a psychedelic revisitation of the brainwashing sequence in the Parallax View. It was one my favourite pieces of Mark’s work bringing together elements of personal belief and aspiration, covert politics, mental malleability, ritualism, language and repetition within a unique militant ecclesiastical setting. The Grumbling Fur soundtrack was a key part of this and it felt like a perfect collaboration to present further.

What are your future plans for OMNE?
PP: 

It’s being developed as a platform to focus on projects that address a more multidisciplinary approach with a focus on sound and language, potentially reissuing some older texts and publications as well as presenting new work through audio and writing.
For more information about Grumbling Fur and Mark Titchner, head over to the band’s and artist’s websites.
