a place both wonderful and strange

A Place Both Wonderful and Strange is a Brooklyn based Lynch inspired artist who balances warp speed creative yet accessible mediums unto a collaborative environment which incorporates event, film, music and art.

Creator Russ Marshalek’s vision is no small feat. His latest artistic installment, short film New Jack Witch is equal parts David Lynch and Janet Jackson (of all things, love!) and is part of a much bigger picture. A conceptual EP and with it, a line of apparel, a 12" single, and a tour is on the horizon. Hardcore. So stay tuned.

Drawing inspiration from both pop and cult, this project defines balance by taking the best parts of old and new and meshing it into an undefinable media with the aim to intrigue.

And there are some niiice collabs involved - Claire Elise Tippins [Fantastic Lands] formally of Featureless Ghost brings visuals to the film and Bunny [Pet Cemetery, Aural Sects] holds fort with audio. Add concept art by Deanna Paquette [Shutterstock, Palm Freetz] and you could say that this has been some serious effort to lift off the ground. Respect.

Marshalek gives perspective on his latest track and short film; "New Jack Witch is an experimental dark electronic post-techno audiovisual story of a post-apocalyptic future in which 'magic and emotion are forbidden' and 'the head and the heart are at a forced disconnect'. Exploring themes of technopaganism, the nature of the natural, and the internet as a spiritual force, New Jack Witch is an audiovisual experience that assumes Rhythm Nation 1814 was a canonical, historical happening." It opens with a beautiful woman floating in a pool of water fully dressed in iconic red and black and precedes to lull you into a sequence which motivates the individual towards a certain independent spirituality. To break down every aspect of this media would take an essay in itself. Let me just say it is always a pleasure to post true art.

If you are in New York early December, check out a bunch of the new stuff at the first live show Dec 3 at Nothing Changes. - Mishka

Sorry For Your Loss, the debut album of the ‘occult electronic dance music’ duo A Place Both Wonderful And Strange, is like an eerie journey into a dark forest; it’s terrifying, yet beautiful, and you can only arrowope you’ll make it out alive. This duality in Niabi Aquena and Russ Marshalek’s music perfectly fits the duo’s Twin Peaks references. “Pedestal” prominently features longing vocals and mysterious whispers provided by Niabi, while the sounds of wind and static surround her. The song’s theme is echoed in the last track, “blue is like drowning and drowning is like this.” “DONT,” however, shrugs off beauty and is straightforwardly creepy, with a taunting, sinister voice and an accompanying music video that shows religious fervor in a darker light.

Though they have a lot of upcoming projects in 2016, Niabi and Russ took the time to talk to us about the occult, their love for dogs, and how they started their duo (you’ll find a stream for Sorry For Your Loss at the bottom of the page).

AudioFemme: How did you two meet?

Niabi: We’d begun the dialogue of wanting to work together after he booked my solo project for a Tori Amos covers night of her album “Under the Pink.” I covered “Icicle” and Russ covered “The Waitress.” We both gravitated, as individuals, to a more beat-orientated, abstract version of our covers, so when he asked if I’d be interested in joining him, it felt quite natural and logical.

Russ: When I moved to New York I was throwing shoegaze parties, and Niabi, ever the shoegaze aficionado, would come out. When my former band played our second 92Y Tribeca gig and were asked to curate a night of moody, Lynchian music, we booked Niabi’s solo project and she got a great response. We tossed around the idea of making music together for a long, long time, but we finally started poking away at it at the end of last year. The energy just felt right so we figured we should at least nail down the tunes we had made together.

AF: Where are you from originally?

Niabi: I’m from the Shenandoah Valley, in Virginia. We’re talking very rural here. I grew up on a dirt road and my address was a route number. We heated our home with a wood stove; my mother being the one, as a single parent, to chop the wood. There was no cable, no internet. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything though. I feel very lucky and grateful to have the upbringing that I did.

Russ: Atlanta, Georgia. I miss it at times. I sometimes wonder if I’d tried harder down there if I could’ve had the successes I’ve had in New York. Sometimes I fantasize about taking my band and my dog and my fiancee and running away back south.

AF: You call your music a “raw, visceral mess.” Can you expand more on this? How does it affect your art, and life in general?

Niabi: After playing in a bunch of bands, including my solo project, I got so tired of striving for perfection. I felt real dismay, not feeling like I could be more playful and experiment without major judgement from others and myself. So now working with Russ in APBWAS, it’s wild and I don’t really know how it happened, but I feel so free to be myself and be experimental without fear of failure. If something doesn’t stick, it’s okay, and when it does – holy hell how neat. So everything has gotten a lot more raw and a lot more natural, [both] in our process of creating and certainly when we play live as well.

Russ: I have no formal musical training, which probably won’t come as a shock to anyone. So a lot of my creative process is literally slopping around in ephemera, taking samples to places where they’re unrecognizable, crafting sounds based on how much I can possibly tolerate. Niabi’s the first person I’ve ever worked with who can, well, work with me in this way. For me, it’s how I live my life, too. I live and love big, messy, and without apology or forethought, and I think that reflects in the music, as well as the performance. We’re two people but we’re big, loud, and messy.

AF: I read about the Goths for Dogs show you were involved in. It’s an amazing idea- though, since you describe your genre as Occult Dance Music, I thought you’d be more into cats. Which animal is your favorite, and why?

Niabi: I love all animals, it’s difficult to name one as a favorite. Right now, I only have a dog. His name is Odie and he’s a blind senior with many missing teeth. “Goths for Dogs” raised money for both of the rescues where we got our current animal friends. To quote one of my favorite art films, Nadja: “I have walked behind the sky, we are all animals.” So that is my answer. There is no favorite, we are all animals.

Russ: I fucking hate cats. As a dear friend said, “If I wanted to throw money at something that doesn’t care about me, I’d invite a man over.” I definitely didn’t choose my dog, Mr. Frito Burrito, he chose me, and he is my favorite animal. He worked on a video with us for Goths for Dogs, by the way:

AF: In your music video for “DONT,” I really liked how you placed such a dark, moody song over the religious archival footage. I was wondering if you could explain: Does association with the occult mean a different kind of religion, or the absence of religion?

Niabi: I’d say a different sort of religion. I’m deeply spiritual of a person, gravitating towards a more Wiccan practice of earth based ritual. The moon and recognition of celebrated earth holidays, solstices, and equinoxes are a very big part of who I am. Of course I am referencing of some very old knowledge here that is actually the influencer of modern Christianity. The thread between paganism and Christianity is not only tangible but historic.

Russ: For me, the occult association is a different kind of religion. Practicing witchcraft, for me, is about personal empowerment as well as appreciating the forces that are beyond my control. It’s made me a much more grateful person.

AF: You picked a great band name. What is the strangest place you’ve been to, or situation you’ve found yourselves in? What about wonderful, or beautiful?

Niabi: It takes a lot for me to consider something strange. Although if I would have to, I’d say humans’ gravitation towards negativity and hatred. I don’t understand how others intentionally try to hurt people. In risking like sounding like a total fucking hippy, I just wish there could be love everywhere and with everything. On beauty, I’d like to offer another quote that I’ve held for many years. I adore mid century art and design and of course love Charles and Ray Eames. I think that he nailed it when he stated that he wanted to find “the uncommon beauty of common things.” Beauty is everywhere if you just open your eyes and look.

Russ: Without getting into it, I every so often have extreme auditory hallucinations. And definitely that is the strangest, because suddenly, in the actual tangible physical world, I experience the deepest and most terrifying parts of my brain, the parts even I keep secret from myself, acting as though they’re real, and present. Some of it is what bleeds into our song “Way Out.” For beautiful: Iceland. Iceland Iceland Iceland. We’re trying so hard to get into Airwaves [Music Festival] this year.

AF: What can you tell us about your upcoming projects?

Niabi: There’s much on the docket for 2016, personally I’m very excited. Our second album is to be recorded upstate in a real cabin with a real wood stove, which I’m very excited about given my mountaineer-woman upbringing.

Russ: I’m terribly influenced by our friends/mentors-of-a-sort Azar Swan, and they talk about their upcoming albums by labeling them LP#, LP#, etc, until they have real names, and so I’ve taken to calling everything LP2, LP3, and LP4, because those are what’s on the docket right now. LP2 is going to be recorded in a house up in the fuck-off woods of Phoenicia, a place that’s really magical, and it’s going to be a version of our touring Keys Open Doors: Hidden Life of Laura Palmer show.

Niabi: During the recording of our second album, we are also going to play with the beginning songs of our third album, which will be more of a collaboration with Vanessa of The Harrow and Synesect and the magical Shanda.

Russ: LP3 we’re writing and recording with Vanessa Irena aka knifesex, aka my fiancee, and our dear friend Shanda. Niabi and I really want to try and make that one an album that’s very much taking the idea of weird electronic dance music and applying some song structure to it. I’m thinking huge, world-stopping choruses.

Niabi: Our intention with the third album is for something more structured, slightly more commercially accessible, with songs that have a chorus and maybe a bridge. Our fourth album will be recorded at the end of the year, however at the moment I can’t say anything more beyond that we have a very exciting producer who we’re working with and it’s going to be incredible. - Audio Femme

“Don’t”: Video Premiere From Occult Pop Duo A Place Both Wonderful And Strange

SLUTIST
September 22, 2015
Slutist is pleased to present the video premiere of “Don’t,” the bewitching first single off A Place Both Wonderful And Strange‘s forthcoming album, Sorry For Your Loss. To delve into the neo-pagan symbology of this haunting artifact, we communed with Russ Marshalek and Niabi Aquena about its creation and their creative process. Catch the Brooklyn-based occult pop duo live at Eraserhood Forever at PhilaMoCA on October 3rd, and the Blade Rave at Terminal 5 on October 9th.

You’re a self-described occult pop duo: how does the occult inform your work?

Russ: This is a really huge question for me to answer, and the first thing that comes to my mind is that because occultism/witchcraft is so inherently feminine to me, it’s a huge facet of the reason APBWAS is still around at all. For a while, the band was just a solo noise project of mine, and I remember being onstage in Brooklyn a few months into it and just screaming into a microphone and clod-hopping around the stage in a pair of creepers and thinking “what, exactly, am I doing here? What am I saying/creating/releasing into the world?” And the answer was not a damn thing that any other white dude with a laptop and a microphone and some pent-up pissed-off-ness hasn’t already done. So if I hadn’t finally connected with Niabi to start making music how we’d long talked about, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, because the overwhelming DUDEness of the whole project had become a huge bummer for me. My own religious practices put me in touch with the fact that a feminine energy is something I need as a counter-balance in order to be able to create anything of value.

We’re a highly spiritual band—everyone we’ve worked with tends to be, really. The first shows we did together we also had a dancer, Bridgette, and we’d invoke and give thanks to Hecate throughout the course of the show and then, of course, kinda very nicely ask her to go her way after a myriad more thanks. Those shows were electric for obvious reasons.

Really, music itself is an occult force. We always have a moment in each show where we both emotionally and mentally wander into our own corners and stay there and kind of begin iterating on a sound or idea and then completely unconsciously the ideas/sounds come together and make something much, much bigger than we are.

“Don’t” has that grainy, VHS found footage quality horror directors and documentarians love. Interestingly, it mostly shows women in the throes of religious ecstasy. Was that intentional? What inspired both the form and content of the video?

Niabi: Thanks for the compliment! The video is literally my first edit, it was a lot of fun putting it together. I come from a background in design/ animation and film and was lucky to get a course in the edit program Premiere through my day job just in time for us needing a video. I started with sorting through the footage that Russ and his girlfriend shot upstate at a creepy Airbnb they stayed in and then effected the footage heavily. The rest—and majority—of the story was cobbled together from archival super 8 footage from 1976 shot in West Virginia at a Pentecostal church. I was doing searches on free domain footage libraries for “snake handling” and “faith healing” and was fortunate to find the documentary, Holy Ghost People. I’m personally fascinated with the idea of the divine feminine and how it’s depicted in art and history which is why I probably subconsciously gravitated to the footage of women in the throes of religious ecstasy. It’s interesting and a little sad to me that through organized religion the women in Holy Ghost People are given acceptance to freak the fuck out, because Jesus. We’ve seen this before; think about the contrast between the sculpture “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” to the Salem witch trials in terms of tone. Think about the differences and the similarities. I see very little divide between the two.

Russ: I kept talking to Niabi about wanting to do something found footage-ish, because I’m obsessed with the format. My girlfriend and I were going to a cabin upstate, and we happened to find ourselves in the most…surreal/unreal surroundings, and the footage I captured ended up becoming less stereotypically creepy and more about how emotionally/mentally/spiritually/sexually/romantically/etc fulfilling those days had been. The song itself walks a line between terror and ecstasy, and so I handed that footage over to Niabi and she somehow read my mind.

There has been a proliferation of neo-pagan/occult-oriented bands, artists, and practices in Brooklyn over the past five years, how does the city foster your artistic practice?

Niabi: I’ve often fetishized the idea of leaving NYC when times get challenging, but where else could I go to get a custom carved candle for rituals and an all women’s kirtan chant all accomplished within a day’s time?

Russ: There’s shit in NY I’m not sure I’d know how to find elsewhere. Slutist, for example. Or Catland—Catland has been hugely influential in nurturing both my practice and my art and combining the two. Also just being able to share line-ups and stages and get drinks with other artists who feel connected to the same things—that, naturally, nurtures the feeling of belonging. And that’s what witchcraft has always kind of meant to me—a feeling of being always connected and never really alone. In everything, really, if we talk about what “ritual” is, to engage in that space and be able to access facets of the brain and the heart and the self that you can’t get to, normally? I mean, shit, I find that at Monster Cycle, which is another spot that, for me, has been hugely important recently in keeping me feeling inspired, connected, and growing. It’s not something that’s immediately obvious for a lot of people, but you know it once you’ve felt it.

Janet Jackson and David Lynch are listed as musical touchstones, what would the two talk about upon meeting?

Niabi: Transcendental Meditation with Mr. Lynch and artistic collaboration with both.

Russ: Blazers and the direction on the Rhythm Nation 1814 short film bc holy fucking hell.

If your upcoming record Sorry For Your Loss were to be represented by 3 historical/fictional occult figures and/or witches, who would they be?

Niabi: Delia Derbyshire. Long, long time hero and pioneer for women in electronic music. Walli Elmark. A Wiccan journalist who supposedly exorcized David Bowie’s home during his “Thin White Duke” phase. Medusa. I find her so incredibly empathetic—unable to look anyone in the eye and connect, unable to ever love. So much loss it breaks my heart in two.

Russ: Joan of Arc, Moll Dyer, Cleopatra, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Zohra Atash

You’re playing the Blade Rave with The Crystal Method and Pictureplane. How much blood can we expect from such an affair?

Niabi: Apparently it’s a lot. And it’s fucking thick, not some “I’m red and representing what blood is but actually but more water,” no. No it’s intense, and there will be a lot of it, in waves, and thick, so dress appropriately.

Russ: A whole fuck of a lot. And I think it’s a proprietary blend? I think they were renting blood from Gwar but now it’s like, fuck it, we can make blood, let’s do this.

What role does ritual play in your performances? What do you hope the audience experiences at your live show?

Niabi: From our very first show, I’ve always saged the room before we play. During our last show I mixed things up by bringing copal resin and coal. The ceremony of lighting the resin and letting the smoke envelope the room plays an important role in our performance, I feel, in terms of setting positive inten - Slutist

INTERVIEWS
0
a place both wonderful and strange
By 1833 @its1833 · On July 27, 2016
How did a place both wonderful and strange come together?

Russ: A place both wonderful and strange was me originally, which sounds super egotistical, but originally I was in a band called Silent Draperunners and we broke up because my bandmate just wanted to be a journalist which is super awesome but I sort of wanted to continue on this path. My issue has always been that like as a dude, i’m not super into just wanting to be a cis gender white dude stomping around and making noise music. so if there’s not a female energy to bounce off of, I kind of don’t want to do it. So when my last collaborator and I split ways, Shanda, Laura, and I started talking about working together

Shanda: I was in a band previously for about 5 years, unfortunately it ended in a very traumatic way, with an act of violence perpetrated against me. At that point I had known Russ for about a year. I had lost everything I had been working on and Russ had also lost something, so we just decided to work together to try to make something new.

Russ: I kind of fancy myself as the witch house “The National”… just because I like vests and I drink a lot of wine

*raises wine glass*

Anyway, Shanda had written some lyrics to a beat I had written for my first project,

Shanda: Vanessa did the production for that one as well

Russ: Oh that’s right, my wife is on that track.

Laura: I would say it was kind of serendipitous when this happened, I didn’t really know Russ outside of his online presence, and I wasn’t acquainted really with Shanda – but the dynamic has really been very fantastic, balanced, and fun. They’re both creatively such mavericks, – Just like Sarah Palin

What is the concept behind this project? I’m assuming it’s Lynchian in nature.

Russ: The name behind the band is what it is just because… I had already gotten the tattoo. Just kidding, but a place both wonderful and strange was one of my favorite parts of Twin Peaks. In 2014, I think, I was approached by the David Lynch Foundation to do a show based around like everything they knew about me because I had done the Silent Draperunners thing for a minute and as a place both wonderful and strange my friend Lucy and I had toured a complete two and a half hour re-soundtracking of “Fire Walking With Me” through like 4 states (and that was goddamn impossible) –but they were basically like Lynch is doing an art opening in Philly and we would like you to do the afterparty and you have like 25 minutes. At the time the full blu-ray had just come out and I was super captivated by the pieces of “Fire Walk With Me” that Lynch had been forced to cut out of the movie by the studio. So I made a show based around those and some other stuff and it ended up becoming a thing that escalated to the point where we realized people didn’t necessarily care about the visuals but they wanted to hear the music because it was this improvised electronic noise that happened to be really sensitive, and I’m probably giving all this too much credit but it’s a noise record that doesn’t take it’s dick out and wave it around. It’s a noise record that doesn’t really even have a gender which i feel like is a thing that doesn’t really exist in the noise scene. There is either shit that Boomkat is like this is transcendental male shit or they call it like nauseating because it’s made by a woman… so

Shanda: The music industry in general, and the world in which we exist is male- dominated. It’s just something for me as a woman to navigate through and to add what I can, what artistry and quality I can to the world. I try to make people experience things maybe not necessarily through a filter of gender but through emotions.

Laura: I kinda feel like at least within the noise scene, it would seem as though the options are limited for women. Like you can either be angry or upset – but the great thing about [The Laura Palmer Deviations] it really allows the grander scope of experience to shine through.

Circling back to the last question, I connected with ‘Twin Peaks’ on a very visceral level, like ‘oh shit this is my home town’. This is a small weird community filled with these fascinating characters somehow co-existing without any real connection to time or logic.

David Lynch has always been a huge influence in any art that I make.

Russ: I think it’s because Lynch manages to take the completely weird and inaccessible and kind of force it down your throat, like telling the audience ‘no you do get’. a place both wonderful and strange is akin to this approach because we take seemingly disparate influences — Janet Jackson, found sound, noise music, David Lynch, extreme darkness and extreme light — and we process it into something that’s completely inaccessible around the edges until you start to experience it. It happens TO you, and it’s in the eye of that tempest that you realize it’s all actually familiar.

Do you have an conclusory remarks about Laura Palmer Deviations and what’s to come after the forthcoming album?

Russ: The record is going to be a version of the soundtrack to what originally initiated as the afterparty of David Lynch’s Unified Field Art opening in Philadelphia. It ended up becoming a touring/improvisational thing every night. What the record is, is multiple performances combined and edited into what is basically a perfect 22 minutes, edited by Partisan, the most amazing mix/master person I’ve ever met.

Shanda: He’s a frickin genius

Laura: He is

He is

Russ: He is a genius. And uh [the record] will be interesting and emotional and moving if you just listen to it. Our goal is to have people listen to it and then come out to a show and our other goal is we want to turn around the third record very quickly because when we do shows that aren’t Laura Palmer based they are a lot pop-ier and this weird sludge noise thing isn’t where we are right now, we’re releasing it because a lot of people wanted it but it doesn’t reflect where or what we are right now. We are going to pop it up a bit in the future. - 1833

TN: You’re both musicians also. How does your music-making feed into your witchcraft and your fitness practice?

Russ: Music is ritual, fitness is ritual. It’s about creating a spell, setting an intention, and eventually enacting a change, be it large or small. In our music and our workouts, ultimately it’s about creating a spell to get from point a to point b, to reach the desired intention and response.

Shanda: Just like magic and fitness, music is the art of controlling or manipulating frequencies, energy, and emotions in order to produce a visceral emotional connection or shift in consciousness. They are all the same thing, just in different forms! - The Numinous