CHARLES WESLEY - C (2023)

As much as 'C' is a typographic sign and the first letter of first name’s author, it further symbolises a hook, something that tends to grasp, hold onto, or an open-ended envelope. The metaphor of the hook as a sound; and its potential to express emotional honesty in weaving rhythms, spoken words and chants. 'C' is also autobiographical. An attempt to portray how Wesley’s non-binariness was lived retrospectively—since he grew up not knowing we actually can express both genders at the same time— and how it is an on-going experiment through becoming, exceeding the ingrained, palpable and unconscious limits in being, towards an embodiment.

Either said, posed very close, or lurked in ambiance, the texts explore intimacy, love and perception at the digital age. Wesley’s voice, surrounded by urban-like glares, often resonates in opaque spaces, merged with signals and air-like pollution, desolation of late capitalism. By treating it, Wesley seeks clarity at an individual scale, inviting the listener to eavesdrop. Radical while manifesting some quirky simplicity, 'C' innovates in the field of electroacoustic pop and nods to different types of influence, from dance music to noise and industrial. Evolving into poetically—not-to-say subjectively—charged environments, it has the power of revealing both the joy and discomfort of Wesley's vulnerable pouring into this faith of possibility.

RIYL: Cosey Fanni Tutti, AGF, Eartheater, Arca, and more abstract moments of COIL.

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Charles Wesley is a composer, songwriter, DJ, and (part time) music journalist born in Lyon, France. Whether Wesley reviews or composes the music, he is interested in perception in listening, and in works that innovate sonic expressiveness, melting the acoustic and the electronic. Wesley's sounds simultaneously draw from the energy and playfulness of dance music and flourish from his own poetic writings that embrace—subjectively—queerness, gender politics, and ecological stakes.