“Das Grausen” (1901-1903) – Alfred Kubin. Sourced from the Obelisk Art History project and serves as the Smiqra and Ὁπλίτης banner image. Expressionist symbolist and at times avant-garde Austrian artist who also wrote one novel.

(The release of the debut album Rɡyaɡ̇dźé! by the Chinese project Smiqra probably provided the motivation for our contributor Vizzah Harri to get in touch with the project’s creator JL, but the interest had already flourished due to JL’s other previous musical projects. In any event, the interview that Harri presents below was the result of a roughly year-long dialogue, and it is a fascinating thing to read at your leisure.)

The multi-instrumentalist, linguist, and shapeshifting artist JL, of Smiqra, Ὁπλίτης and Vitriolic Sage fame, graced us with a correspondence in a language they are not fluent in. It’s remarkable that they set aside time to read, translate, and answer our questions while they were still very busy academically.

The term avant-garde often gets thrown round without much thought as to what it means or pertains to. If you ask a philosopher, art professor, music theorist, and a critic you might come to a bunch of different answers as to how it relates to their context. Generally, it has to do with exactly what it means in the original French, advanced guard. That which pushes the boundaries of convention. In that comfortable niche of discontent with the status quo, Smiqra and Rɡyaɡ̇dźé! comes across as a logical evolution from Ὁπλίτης, an album that was reviewed here last year. Continue reading »