The Ouroboros and the Alchemy of Rebirth

A review of the album “Ouroboros” by GRiZ

Last month, GRiZ unexpectedly dropped a new album called Ouroboros. The album took fans by surprise not simply because it arrived unannounced, but also because Grant Kwiecinski, the man behind the GRiZ project, had announced an upcoming hiatus of unspecified duration. No one expected a new GRiZ album to mark the beginning of his time away from being GRiZ.

As a farewell gift to his fans, the short album revisits many of the sounds that made (and make) GRiZ so popular. The songs feature, as you would expect from a trendsetter in the glitch-bass scene, prominent and meticulously designed low ends, sometimes wobbling with wild filter sweeps and at other times buzzing with infectious exhilaration. The album also showcases GRiZ’s talent for blending natural, organic sounds with synthetic sonics to create melodies and rhythms that weave between chill, downtempo ambiance and funky, syncopated backbeats. His trademark saxophone riffs glide across many of the tracks, deliciously warm notes floating amidst crisp, minimalist arpeggios and growling baselines. Lyrically, the songs touch on themes of love, hope, and good vibes, but they also hit with a kiss of melancholy. The opening track, “t a k e c a r e,” is a spoken-word farewell—“before I go, I wanted to make sure I told you this”—and songs such as “f a d i n g,” “Falling Flying”, and “Better From Here,” all land with a sense of forlorn nostalgia.

However, by giving this capstone work the title Ouroboros, GRiZ draws on the symbolic weight of alchemical traditions dating back to ancient Egypt and Greece. The ouroboros, a symbol depicting a serpent swallowing its own tail—an image prominently displayed on the album’s cover—represents unity and re-creation. I’m reminded of Abaraxas, the 3rd century Greek philosopher and alchemist who believed that music was a vital component of the rituals needed to produce that magical elixir of transmutation known as the philosopher’s stone. Taking inspiration from the numeric harmonies of Pythagorean philosophy, Abaraxas conjectured that the music of the spheres would unlock the prima materia and allow alchemy to transcend the physical limitations imposed by the four elements of earth, air, water, and fire. Nearly fourteen centuries later, we find Michael Maier developing similar themes in his Atalanta fugiens. This book, published in the early 1600s, weaves music, art, and text (both German and Latin) into an allegory that encodes the hidden secrets of alchemical transmutation. It is a work that has reverberated through the centuries and is still studied today for its archetypal insights.

For these philosophers, sound and music were essential to enlightenment. They saw music as an ecstasy that merged the disparate emanations of the One into a transcendent unity of the soul. A merging symbolized by the ouroboros serpent devouring its own tail. In the terms of an alchemical formula, we might say that music and song empower us to consume the limitations of our past and be reborn in a limitless future. I imagine this philosophy aligns closely with the goals of Mr. Kwiecinski’s own hiatus. His album suggests that he too seeks a musical rebirth through the ancient mysteries of the ouroboros. I hope he finds it.

The cover of Ouroboros, and a spread from Atalanta fugiens (courtesy of Furnace and Fugue).