Apocope is the second C.A.N.V.A.S. compilation, following Cipher (2019) and featuring another grouping of dispersed artists responding to a call-out under a unifying theme/sky. Where Cipher approached codification, Apocope approaches the cut-off point of a pop operative. An ‘apocope’ is a word truncated—a sound omitted—moulded into a shape that rolls off of the tongue yet carries within it further significance. Together as C.A.N.V.A.S; Lugh, Olan Monk and Elvin Brandhi invited Alpha Maid, Bashar Suleiman, Billy Bultheel, Hulubalang and Nadah El Shazly to join them in excavating ‘POP’—a boundless yet always personal subject, specific to context and forms of co-existence. The resulting record created by the group is a warped hypogeum of dissonant intimacies, the texture of the post-POPped bubble strewn into unpredictable hymns of prophetic onomatopoeia. Together this collection of tracks sustains tangible reciprocity between those involved, despite the dislocation of the time during which it was made and the physical distance which separated the artists who communicated remotely. HYPE! As the commercialization of an essentially positive impulse to exert imbalance. We asked ourselves to what extent we are the subject of the conditions we fight against, which contagions inhabit our receptivity. What involuntarily haunts the creative inventory. Apocope is a compilation of tracks that approach without reaching their referent. The possible drop-off point of the pop lineage. Idols falling. Apo-Cope, understood also as apocalyptic hope. This title recovers the dynamic meaning of Cope (Kolaphos). Cope is not a capacity to contain a situation, it is a strike, a hit—a resistant attack. A de-fence mechanism as a cutting through the protective infrastructure and allowing the skin to breathe. A collective calling up, throwing off our infatuations. The joy of pop nothingness falls flat of an exuberant call-out. Instead, it’s a burnt out landscape of post-pop memories. Shells of cars with the windows blasted out and the radio playing a skipping CD on infinite loop or tuning into radio stations still echoing from last year, already forgotten. A pandemic induced surge-out, a farewell to arms. The greatest hits of an only half-remembered era of reducing attention spans and blown out pop hedonist nihilism, a NOW compilation for the elongated annulment of our prospects. Apocope is a somewhat jaded, stranded, and disoriented but defiant and hopeful gesture, striving to redefine the realm of the possible. This is neither a tabula rasa, a clean-cut break from the past, nor is it nostalgic. Apocope remodels the vernacular to create breathing-space for an era gasping for air. It reveals and reflects the trauma of a generation plagued by cultural stasis and strife, letting out some bruised blood. We sidle with the cut-off point, the Cope, the Hit that POP’s our bubble, revealing the face disguised by flawless elastic. To learn from the affectivity of ideological oppression we join the hit parade assertively walking in the opposite direction.
