Polar Inertia – Environment Control [Northern Electronics, 2024-02-23]
The Circle exists thanks to three tracks, one of them being “Black Sun”:
You certainly know it: play it again, feel it, experience one more time its vertiginous profundity, dark and distant. Caught by the hypnotic mystery, you might express a last whisper before getting lost in the music: “Who are you, dear Polar Inertia?”
The track answers that it doesn’t want you to know. Through its deep John Carpenter-like clouds of fog, a wall is set between you and mysterious creatures: “More than a dozen artists” may contribute to Polar Inertia, as confessed in a rare interview, or just two, Voiski and Ductile, or just one, Voiski. It doesn’t matter. It’s not about the authors, it’s about the project, a value also written in big letters in Polar Inertia’s biography: “We are no one because we want to be no one, and to be no one we have to be everywhere and nowhere.”
Thus regarding their identity, we can only present the top of the iceberg, sharing for instance where their name comes from, if you don’t already know it. Specifically, it originated from the book “Polar Inertia“, penned by French philosopher Paul Virilio. It’s a scientific essay, uneasy to digest, stating in short that the more you move towards modernity, the less physically active you become, as if “inertia” or “immobility” was an ultimate goal to reach for mankind. For instance, right now, thanks to technology, you are comfortably listening to Polar Inertia from your device instead of in a club or festival… We won’t blame you: you should see the old yet comfortable sofa that we are using to write this review, with its generous amount of soft pillows, bravely carrying our lazy asssss…
If Voiski and Ductile stated that the title of the book, more than the content, convinced them to name their project, Virilio’s theories also provide potential interpretation guidance to their artistic concept: Polar Inertia is “everywhere” thanks to the Internet, the means of transportation allowing them to tour worldwide and, deeper, the propagation of the powerful soundwave itself, going from a creation directly to your body, mind and heart. Polar Inertia is also “nowhere”, hidden behind their computer in the studio. There are plenty of other common points with the book: its chapters correspond to the titles of most of their releases, and going a little riskier in the interpretation, the deep and hypnotic side of their atmospheres is a strong invitation to an “inertial chill”, isn’t it?
This shall of course be nuanced, especially since the artists don’t like to be labelled, although they seemingly are, from their concept. Yet it shall be seen as a source of creativity, rather than limitation. The project remains very open, for instance by encompassing more than just the music, as they clarified: “We also do exhibitions, text and image publications in magazines and artistic fanzines. We also have installations at festivals or in galleries. We are multidisciplinary.” Feel the “immobility” and the “permanence” in their artistic world, favourable to create timeless art, which is not that bad from a static computer…
Now that you have a hint of the context, let’s hit play on “Environment Control” and appreciate Polar Inertia’s deep cinematic signature. Seemingly illustrating how faster and faster mankind has been “controlling its environment” throughout history, an acceleration of the tempo towards the release can be felt. It contributes to marking the great return of fast techno, as showcased in their introductive mix for Monument, and confirmed right after on the same platform by the upload of Feral & Spekki Webu’s exhilarating live session at Mo:Dem.
Regarding the narration within the album’s first track: it follows a saga that develops in most of Polar Inertia’s releases. From what we understood, a sci-fi author is involved in the project and writes the story of “Polar Inertia”, just inspired by the name, without any link to Paul Virilio’s content, except the division into five chapters. The present album represents the fourth one and below, we added it to the others, to grant access to the story from the beginning:
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The fifth and last chapter in the book is titled “Polar Inertia”, which sounds like a climax, and we pray that the waiting will not take another eight years to discover it. Sure, we’ve been happy to see Polar Inertia active in clubs and festivals in the past few years, but well, we also enjoy our “inertial sofa”…
WRITING BY: CEDRIC FINKBEINER | 4 MARCH 2024
