Magnetic Recollections: Kordz on Cassette - Bridging the Divide Between the Public and the Personal

=====================================================================

In the heart of Tbilisi, Georgia, electronic music artist Kordz has released a unique piece that encapsulates the essence of his journey and the city's electronic scene. The cassette, designed by Sandro Tavartkiladze, is more than just a collection of tracks; it is a modern reliquary, a vessel of dual truths.

The A-side of the cassette, Side A, is a cartography of recognition, mapping Kordz's growth through the pieces that became calling cards, linking Tbilisi's scene to international electronic music. Here, repetition insists on the durability of the hits, testing their staying power.

On the flip side, Side B, lies a world of unreleased tracks, B-sides, sketches, and fragile pieces that never made it to digital platforms. This side articulates the dual life of contemporary Georgian music, preserving local textures, idiosyncrasies, and eccentricities that might resist global legibility but remain crucial to the ecology of the scene.

The atmosphere on Side B is hushed, exploratory, and private, resembling an unlocked diary rather than a discography. Here, one track may hang on a single synthesizer tone stretched until it shimmers like stained glass; another may lean on field recordings that carry the muffled sound of a street in Tbilisi at dusk. These hidden tracks bloom on tape, revealing experiments with texture, improvisations with form, and soundscapes that flirt with ambient drift or industrial fracture.

The cultural significance of Side B lies in its refusal to conform and its resistance to commodification. It reasserts the value of scarcity, existing only in this cassette, in a format that demands rewinding, flipping, and re-listening. The cassette refuses the convenience of shuffle, reminding the listener that art has order, sequence, and secret reversals.

Listening to Side B is to overhear the artist thinking, an archive of hesitations, and unruly ideas that are too delicate to be turned into a "hit." The cassette insists on ritual in a culture of streaming platforms, making the act of turning the object in your hand feel radical. In the hands of Kordz, the cassette is a metaphor for artistic identity, divided into two halves: Side A and Side B.

Side A, curated like a visiting card, is a sonic biography, featuring the "hits" or popular tracks that have entered circulation. It is less about surprise and more about affirmation, declaring the artist known to the public. The cassette form itself deepens this duality, enacting a ritual of reversal, emphasizing that art has two faces: the sanctioned, glossy surface and the hidden drafts, both necessary, both true.

In conclusion, Kordz's cassette is not merely a document of tracks but a portrait of an artist divided between two imperatives: to be heard and to hear himself. Its power lies less in the hits than in the quiet, unreleased materials where risk and invention take root. This unique piece is a testament to the richness and diversity of contemporary Georgian electronic music and a reminder that art often thrives in the shadows, resisting easy categorization and commercialization.

Magnetic Recollections: Kordz on Cassette - Bridging the Divide Between the Public and the Personal