The Voice of Theseus

by Yann Novak

supported by

	/

Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Matte laminated, monochrome printed and embossed sleeve with insert card

Includes digital pre-order of The Voice of Theseus. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

digital album releases July 7, 2023

item ships out on or around July 8, 2023

Purchasable with gift card

$12 USD or more
Streaming + Download

Pre-order of The Voice of Theseus. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

Purchasable with gift card

releases July 7, 2023

$9 USD or more

1.	A Monument to Oblivion
2.	Reflex Point
3.	Traversing the Substrate
4.	Interlude: The Translator
5.	Super Coherent Light 08:43	buy track
6.	Patterned Behavior
7.	The Inevitability of Failure
8.	Seeing Light Without Knowing Darkness
9.	We Went out, Not with a Whimper, but a Whisper…

about

From Yann Novak
In Greek mythology, the legend of Theseus describes how the king-founder of ancient Athens rescues the children of his city from King Minos’ minotaur on the island of Crete. In commemoration, Athenians began a pilgrimage to honor his victory, taking the ship of Theseus and sailing it from Athens to Delos. It was with this tradition that a philosophical paradox about the historic ship was raised: As the ship was repaired, piece by piece, until it was no longer composed of any original parts, at what point could the ship no longer be considered the same entity?

In recent years, I’ve become interested in exploring the perceptual differences I experience. While some of these differences—partial color blindness and dyslexia—have been with me my entire life, tinnitus caused by hearing damage is a relatively new change to how I experience the world. It is these sensory challenges which have shaped my artistic practice by creating what I call a perceptual insecurity—an uncertainty of how accurately I discern the world around me.

The Voice of Theseus is my attempt to explore the obstacles I face in processing external sensory information. If I have trouble perceiving reds and greens, if I have trouble hearing certain frequencies, if I don’t interpret written language in a standard way, how closely can I experience reality in the way that others experience it? The album asks the listener to question how their unique means of perception and interpretation might differ from that of others.

For The Voice of Theseus, I asked two of my favorite vocalists to assist with this experiment. Both Dorian Wood and G.Brenner recorded vocals for me to manipulate throughout the album. If their original audio is Theseus’s ship, the changes I make to their voices are like the Athenians replacing each of the original vessel’s pieces. And so, how far can these vocals be pushed while still remaining attached to the vocalists’ identities? Where lies the separation between the source materials and the objects they’re used to create?

The myth of Theseus’ ship allowed me to tease at the nuances of how reality can be observed, interpreted, and altered in an indeterminate number of ways; it can be dismantled and rebuilt, many times over. And yet, because of my internal circumstances, a perceptual insecurity remains. As flexible as the true nature of an object or moment may be, inaccuracy looms. There’s no real way to know how great the disparity is between my observational experiences and another’s, and no clear limit of how many pieces of our shared reality can be altered—before it stops being just that.

credits

releases July 7, 2023

Vocals by Gabriel Brenner and Dorian Wood.
Cover image by Joel Westendorf.
Mastered by Lawrence English at Negative Space.
Published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music, UK.

license

about

Yann Novak Los Angeles, California

Yann Novak is an interdisciplinary artist and composer based in Los Angeles. His work is guided by his unique perspective as a queer autodidact. Informed by his partial color blindness and dyslexia, Novak uses sound and light to explore how these intangible materials can act as catalysts to focus our awareness on our own direct experience. ... more

Recommendations

contact / help

Contact Yann Novak

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Yann Novak, you may also like:

I'll Look For You In Others
by Patricia Wolf

supported by 17 fans who also own “The Voice of Theseus”

Something so raw and vulnerable about this album connects with me on a visceral level. There’s deep beauty within the sadness. Thank you. LT
go to album
Colours Of Air
by loscil // lawrence english

supported by 13 fans who also own “The Voice of Theseus”

Magenta is pure epic błażej
go to album
Innocent Passage in the Territorial Sea
by Olivia Block

supported by 12 fans who also own “The Voice of Theseus”

One of her strongest works ever. This album has deep ambient drone instrumentals, but also some almost krautrock-y moments which I seriously love. 5/5. Zen Sounds
go to album
Black Tortoise
by Vādin

A collaboration between two sound artists aims for uncanny, hallucinatory territory. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 9, 2022
go to album
Recalcitrance
by Matthijs Kouw & Gagi Petrovic

Experimentalists Matthijs Jouw & Gagi Petrovic get metaphysical on this split LP interpreting shared source sounds to differing ends. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 27, 2021
go to album
thru the cosmos [pallas/perseids]
by variant

The third release in the "thru the cosmos" series from Detroit's Echospace celebrates astronomical events with cosmic soundscapes. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 5, 2016
go to album
See-Through
by Patricia Wolf

supported by 12 fans who also own “The Voice of Theseus”

So glad I discovered you. binocular rivalry
go to album