Two Self-Portraits Reconsidered: Eleven Tigers and Baiba Yurkevich

"I decided to go for a walk. The wind broke my umbrella after two minutes. The summer in Holland is non-stop rain and wind. Where, oh where, are you sunny weather? Please come back, please! This isn't funny anymore." Stepping from the security of a hometown into unfamiliar postal codes, disorientation sometimes results. Not long ago, by way of example, Yurkevich turned to a quote from David Lynch, stating that big ideas or "big fish" will only be found in "deep water... You need to swim as deep and far as you can." And yet, far from familiarity, the freedom offered by such realms begins to change.

Amid strange streets and faces, a sense of objectification emerges: feelings of uniqueness fade away. Concerns over anonymity occasionally take dramatic form: "Sometimes I imagine I'm [merely] a thing. I might even be the chair I'm sitting on - or a clock on the wall; I could be cigarette smoke or a wooden table with four legs. A cup of coffee or a soft, white pillow..."

Sometimes I imagine I'm merely a thing. I might even be the chair I'm sitting on...

That swift transition from lyricism into inanimacy(!) holds another surprise. The logical upshot of grand objectifcation, one might expect, of feeling "oneSELF" to be a wooden object, would be melancholy or self-pity. Quite the opposite happens, in actual fact. By reducing selfhood to the level of (widespread!) objects, a sense of universality starts to take shape. Yurkevich has an inkling that connections exist between the world of things that (haughty) humans have long since lost. Objects, being everywhere and interchangeable, are therefore more social than people, perhaps.

Humility and extreme modesty thus have their benefits: "I choose these objects randomly. It's just that I like to imagine that I'm among them. That I'm not human. 'Why?' you ask. I do it in order to feel that every single thing has a story or a purpose. Everything is connected. Everything."

That brings us to Jokubas Dargis, raised in Lithuania, but living in London where he performs as Eleven Tigers. The reaction here to emigre life might be rather different, since Mr. Dargis refers to himself, albeit ironically, as a "swinging romantic in Digitopolis." Maybe, in other words, there's a realm of digital experience that trumps anything physical. Facebook, here we come.

Dargis' project has been praised for encapsulating the “very best ideas from the past two decades of electronic music, including hyperactive D&B beats. [Eleven Tigers embody a form of] underwater dubstep, plus a dark ambience, and [even] the reverberations of post-apocalyptic cityscapes.” In other words, these are the sounds of places not only far from home, but those absent from the map altogether.

The sounds of an atlas lapsing into absence. Digitopolis must surely be better.

...the reverberations of post-apocalyptic cityscapes 

Just like Baiba Yurkevich, Dargis studied in a rather empirical manner. He too, came to music through experiment more than through tradition: "I was listening to everything from Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins to early acid-jazz." His subsequent move to London in 2007 would help to define a musical trajectory, turning electicism into more specific forms of progress. Once he was in the UK, some useful and rather unexpected attention was forthcoming from Mary Anne Hobbs, whose endorsement led to Dargis' perceived association(s) with dubstep. This also prompted his desire to move beyond that same style. No sooner was he linked with one concrete genre - or position on the musical map - than he wanted to abandon it.

Have laptop, will travel. ASAP.

These developments, both philosophical and musical, were nicely captured in a recent interview with the Playground webzine, where Dargis spoke of "London’s monstrous nature" and its direct influence upon his digital, often fantastic soundscapes of alternative experience. Put differently, the physical experience of one tangible location was still prompting the imagination and construction of a virtual equivalent.

This, however, is not some easy-going flight from actuality. Dargis' status as an overseas student in the UK means that has worked both in a local pub and as a bike courier. On top of his studies, those burdensome, yet unavoidable obligations mean that music cannot be given his full attention. Over time, the stresses of quotidian life can be very telling. Here we see one good reason why Yurkevich might yearn for a better sense of social "connectivity" - and why the music of Eleven Tigers might ponder life after urban claustrophobia.

I just follow my own little [musical] vision, which makes me happy

"I often feel I'm sacrificing my mental health and personal life... Partying and socializing are all pretty distant [from my experience] right now... I just follow my own little vision, which makes me both happy and reflects the things I love most." Transition from one physical realm to another, from one small city to another's "monstrous nature," has prompted thoughts on the relativity of geography per se. Love en route is a worthy, welcome anchor.

Some burdens are worth shouldering more than others. Love would be one of them; city life would not.

Directly inspired - and touchingly so - by his girlfriend, Dargis also holds the "parallel universe" of Japanese anime dear to his heart. Amour and animation are fine counterweights to a couple of additional problems, or what he calls the difficult "filtering of data" in modern experience. "We're going through an amazing time of fundamental human change... Actually, the future is NOW: you either accept it, i.e., go and explore it, or remain stuck in a world of denial."

Accepting the "monstrous" scale of international experience, though, does not guarantee pleasure. Wisdom and desire both progress, yet move further apart. Each gains at the loss of the other.

The future is NOW: you either accept it or remain stuck in a world of denial

Here, in negotiating the troubling disparity between curiosity and anxiety, we encounter the need for the (same) delicate balance found in Yurkevich's experience between an adventurous spirit, and  - once those dimensions are actively engaged - concerns over one's disappearance or erasure. The line between "outward" adventure and anonymity is thin.

For Yurkevich those overwhelming dimensions take the form of Lynch's "deep water," whereas for Dargis, the formless, ineffable boundaries of digital experience play a similar role. They both entice and unnerve. That link between fun and fear was wonderfully captured by the small USB sticks designed to promote a recent Eleven Tigers recording. Toys and tigers briefly became as one.

Currently he has plans to develop video interpretations of his recent "111" album with one of the special effects experts who worked on Christopher Nolan’s “Inception”. There seems no better example of how the music of Eleven Tigers hopes to deal with the tricky, modern interface of mental and physical domains. After all, "Inception" was a film designed to play upon our fears of losing that which these musicians hold so dear: reverie.

As the tagline had it, the movie was set "in a world where technology exists to enter the human mind - through dream invasion." And so, as the logo for Eleven Tigers suggests below, under those modern, urban pressures (exacerbated by emigration) singularity and selfhood are subjected to a wealth of unwanted, yet intriguing intrusions. Hence the aforementioned "hyperactive D&B beats." 

Curiosity killed the cat, apparently, and the music of Jokubas Dargis implies that even tigers can suffer. Especially in the Big City.