Maria W Horn’s new album Panoptikon is a suite of choral and electronic music originally produced for an installation in the disbanded Vita Duvan panopticon prison in Luleå, Sweden. According to the press materials, the circular prison structure of Vita Duvan, which enabled central monitoring, was meant to create a sense of omniscient surveillance. The panopticon made the inmates aware that they could be monitored at any time without having any way of checking if this was actually the case.
Panopitkon was originally presented as a multichannel sound and light installation where the imagined individual voices of the inmates were represented by loudspeakers placed in the various cells of the prison. Opening track Omnia citra mortem (everything until death) is a legal term that means prisoners who did not confess their crime could not be sentenced to death, but only to torture until a confession was forthcoming.
If this all sounds overwhelmingly bleak, then yes, there is undoubtedly a darkness and meaning tone to much of the music here. But it is also in parts quite overwhelmingly beautiful, and has already had a profound effect on me. Without doubt one of the most striking and accomplished albums of the year so far.
The Predatory Wasp 