Colin Self - respite ∞ levity for the nameless ghost in crisis

Followers of Self’s work will still find familiar sonic forms on r∞L4nGc, from galvanizing electronic experimentations to Self’s lofty, soaring voice, undiminished after years of relative silence. “Busy Walks Into the Memory Palace” is assthrowing dance music for corporeal forms that don’t yet exist, making Self a different kind of time traveller, the track primed to be played thousands of years hence. On “Dissumlato,” it sounds as if Self has been sealed into a wayward spacecraft, a synthesizer and their voice their only company, performing for themselves and whomever else in the beyond might be listening to them. Attending to more earthly concerns, and the fraying queer communities that Self has nourished for many years, “gajo” deploys a 2-step beat, interweaving chamber orchestral manoeuvres and electronic vocal modulation. As they sing, “Something calling out to me from the other side/It’s my own choice to make within this life,” you hear Self contemplate the ecstatic terror of reaching into the unknown in one another, no space to shapeshift without letting down the barriers separating ourselves from one another in the first place.

“∞,” the album’s closing track, a nearly 11-minute suite (also released as lemniscate, a four-track EP to introduce Colin’s new music), is central to the album’s thematic core. The lemniscate, the formal name for the mathematical sign most of us know as the infinity symbol, has guided Self backwards and forwards through the endless quest to carry meaning from one realm to another. It’s a looping journey that requires immense humility and a willingness to shed the stability of the bounded self, instead opening to voices that cry out from a darkened corner, still too vulnerable to emerge in daylight. 

“The lemniscate begins with a prayer and darkness being pulled into a portal in which I have to sort of face death, or face loss and grief and sadness, to then kind of come out on the other side with some clarity,” Self says. “Instead of thinking of the darkness being this place of fear, it’s often in the shadows where the important things are happening. We can’t know [these spirits], or we can’t see them, but we have to believe that they exist.” Many spirits present themselves on the album, and while Self’s rapturous singing ability is the medium for these transmissions, listen closely and you might meet someone you never knew existed. Colin Self’s respite ∞ levity for the nameless ghost in crisis will be released on vinyl, Japanese import CD, and digital editions on February 21, 2025. On behalf of Colin and RVNG Intl., a portion of the proceeds from this release will benefit Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, an organization that provides free medical care to thousands of injured and ill children yearly who lack access to care within the local health care system.