AVAILABLE / schön rec.
ΛNMSM
Description
ΛNMSM — Before the World Divides
Nicolie Binara
Do things have an inner life?
The way of seeing the world that answers yes to this question is what we have come to call animism. But it is not one superstition among many. The anthropologist Philippe Descola showed that the very way the world is partitioned differs from culture to culture, and positioned animism not as a primitive error but as an ontology in its own right — equal in standing to naturalism, the modern Western division of "human" and "nature."
For Descola, when we situate ourselves in relation to the things of the world, two dimensions are at work. Interiority — mind, soul, consciousness, the inner aspect. And physicality — body, form, the way of existing as matter. Whether these are judged to be the same or different between ourselves and another being — the combinations of that judgment are what cause the world to appear in different ways.
This EP traces that process of division itself, as four drones heard in sequence. Rather than declaring animism at the outset, it lets you listen to the path by which the world rises into animism.
01. Interiority
In the beginning, there is interiority. Deep in the world, something like a mind, not yet named. Whose it is, what it connects to — none of this is known yet. Within the most rarefied, undifferentiated drone, only the faint sense that an inner thing exists is set in place.
02. Identity
That interiority comes to recognize that it is shared — with oneself, with others. In stone, in beast, the same mind dwells: the moment the continuity of interiority is discovered. Beats and overtones begin to rise through the sustained tone as a kind of resonance-in-common.
03. Physicality
Yet this shared interiority appears only through different bodies, different matter. The same mind takes on the form of a bird, of a tree, of a stone. Here the sound acquires material texture, and timbres begin to divide. Interiority is continuous; the body is discontinuous — the definition of animism takes shape here.
04. Differentiation
By taking on a body, the world ceases to be unified and disperses into a multiplicity of modes of being. This is not abstract difference, but the multiplicity that necessarily arises from having assumed matter. The sound multiplies into layers, spreads like an ecosystem, and the EP closes.
The spiritual → the relational → the material → the ecological.
By the time the four tracks have been heard, the animist schema — interiority is continuous, the body is discontinuous — rises up not as a premise but as a self-generated conclusion. The title ΛNMSM — Animisme, with its A replaced by the Greek letter lambda (Λ) — is an attempt to overlay this worldview with the scale of the cosmos. When the view that an inner life dwells in all things is extended even to planets and dust, what does it sound like?
From before the world has divided.
Nicolie Binara
Do things have an inner life?
The way of seeing the world that answers yes to this question is what we have come to call animism. But it is not one superstition among many. The anthropologist Philippe Descola showed that the very way the world is partitioned differs from culture to culture, and positioned animism not as a primitive error but as an ontology in its own right — equal in standing to naturalism, the modern Western division of "human" and "nature."
For Descola, when we situate ourselves in relation to the things of the world, two dimensions are at work. Interiority — mind, soul, consciousness, the inner aspect. And physicality — body, form, the way of existing as matter. Whether these are judged to be the same or different between ourselves and another being — the combinations of that judgment are what cause the world to appear in different ways.
This EP traces that process of division itself, as four drones heard in sequence. Rather than declaring animism at the outset, it lets you listen to the path by which the world rises into animism.
01. Interiority
In the beginning, there is interiority. Deep in the world, something like a mind, not yet named. Whose it is, what it connects to — none of this is known yet. Within the most rarefied, undifferentiated drone, only the faint sense that an inner thing exists is set in place.
02. Identity
That interiority comes to recognize that it is shared — with oneself, with others. In stone, in beast, the same mind dwells: the moment the continuity of interiority is discovered. Beats and overtones begin to rise through the sustained tone as a kind of resonance-in-common.
03. Physicality
Yet this shared interiority appears only through different bodies, different matter. The same mind takes on the form of a bird, of a tree, of a stone. Here the sound acquires material texture, and timbres begin to divide. Interiority is continuous; the body is discontinuous — the definition of animism takes shape here.
04. Differentiation
By taking on a body, the world ceases to be unified and disperses into a multiplicity of modes of being. This is not abstract difference, but the multiplicity that necessarily arises from having assumed matter. The sound multiplies into layers, spreads like an ecosystem, and the EP closes.
The spiritual → the relational → the material → the ecological.
By the time the four tracks have been heard, the animist schema — interiority is continuous, the body is discontinuous — rises up not as a premise but as a self-generated conclusion. The title ΛNMSM — Animisme, with its A replaced by the Greek letter lambda (Λ) — is an attempt to overlay this worldview with the scale of the cosmos. When the view that an inner life dwells in all things is extended even to planets and dust, what does it sound like?
From before the world has divided.
Tracklist
1. Intériorité — 05:33
2. Identité — 05:20
3. Physicalité — 07:25
4. Différenciation — 04:48
2. Identité — 05:20
3. Physicalité — 07:25
4. Différenciation — 04:48
Credits / Rights
Generated by Nicolie Binara.
Produced and mastered by Setsuya KUROTAKI.
Artwork by Setsuya KUROTAKI.
All tracks are copyright protected. All rights reserved.
℗ & © 2026 schön rec. under exclusive license to NOiR Inc.
Produced and mastered by Setsuya KUROTAKI.
Artwork by Setsuya KUROTAKI.
All tracks are copyright protected. All rights reserved.
℗ & © 2026 schön rec. under exclusive license to NOiR Inc.
Edition notes
Released on Bandcamp on 31 May 2026 as a four-track digital album. Apple Music carries the same work and track sequence. No separate edition or changed configuration has been identified.
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