MIDDLE OUEST

After a digital single on Optimo Music Digital Danceforce, Optimo Music welcomes Bergsonist to the main label with a full album. Ridiculously talented and prolific, Bergsonist is one of the most interesting, thoughtful, and important artists of modern times. Selwa Abd, aka Bergsonist, is a New York-based artist and musician originally from Morocco. She is the founder of Bizaarbazaar, a music platform and publication that publishes podcasts and interviews by DJs and producers from around the world. Under the guise Bergsonist, derived from Gilles Deleuze's Bergsonism (1988), she uses a variety of media to investigate social resonance through divergent conceptual aesthetics (minimalism, techno, and music concrete, to name a few). Through her work, she explores notions of identity, memory, and social politics. In 2017, she started Pick Up The Flow, a resource to promote congregation and exchange between peers. Currently, co-run with Stephen Decker. In 2019, she co-founded 3afak with DJ Sanna, a collective that aims to empower Arab women's creative vision in New York.Words about the album: Middle Ouest is an ode to my history, present and future self. Like a sonic autobiography, It's the first body of work that realistically depicts my identity. It's a statement towards all the people who tried to put me into a box. I'm not a box but a genre-less ocean. I don't make genres, I just make music I feel making in the moment. It's all about capturing the moment in a given time. If the aesthetic happens to be house or techno then it is. But I'm not a techno artist... I'm just a free sonic 'voyageur'. I make music as I feel the world; it can be dark, jovial, weird... I mirror the feelings into sonic compositions. However, the only variables that never change in this equation are the message and intention. ?01. Middle Ouest (4:01)?02. Amazon Snake Charming (6:27)?03. Gaza Border Violence (3:42)?04. Magnesium (5:22)?05. Otology (3:26)?06. L'algorithme (3:05)?07. La Rave (4:26)?08. Ach Briti (2:32)?09. Don't Have Babies (3:18)?10. Faith Game (6:00)?11. Poverty (5:16)