Patricia Taxxon Renews her Sense of Self on ‘Bicycle’
In the many years that electronic polymath Patricia Taxxon has cultivated her styles, there’s been a significant progression in her sense of sentimentality and personality peaking through her art and becoming surface-level. What used to be mere moments of earnestness in a sea of otherwise conceptually opaque works morphed over eight years to become more open and more truthful. Coinciding with this turning of a new leaf was the gradual increase in furry artwork, as well as lyrical hints and premises, that littered her work. ‘Little Spoon’ in this sense was breaking new ground, a signal of what was yet to develop. 2022 in particular was an especially furry year for Patricia — six releases all with some form of anthropomorphized entity or furred creature on the cover art.
This all came to a head with her video essay titled ‘On the Ethics of Boinking Animal People’, in which she described the intimate relationship she and others had over being both a furry and autistic through the lens of media that is regarded as furry by her or other people. It was controversial from the jump, with some categorically deeming it zoophilic — but to those who actually watched the video, it became a fundamental work of understanding that allowed a lot of people to reach into themselves and discover their identity as a furry. I myself lauded it as one of the most important works of furry philosophy to date, though only in hushed corners so as not to incite a mob.
The relatively quiet period of Patricia’s 2023 was interrupted, both by the video essay but also by the release of a seven-part IDM anthology which chronicled her rekindling with “that part of [her]self which [she] can never get back.” It featured furry artist TwistCMYK’s contributions on the cover art, depicting Patricia’s fursona in various states of joy, calm, fear, anguish, and dissociation. Her essay detailed the link she had to certain methods of sound design and autism as she related to it, which became apparent with ‘TECHDOG 1–7’ and its scattershot renditions of ambience and syncopation. Its twelve-hour time sink, cover art, and feverish rhythms signaled to some that this was the beginning of a new era — ‘Bicycle’ is that proof manifest.
Across its relatively brief runtime, ‘Bicycle’ takes great pains to develop this twitching, percussive motif that results in a ton of tiny sounds in any given loop. This produces a number of effects, namely the constant sense of agitation and unease hidden in the underbelly of every track. It’s not enough for some tracks to be morose or dark, even otherwise happy pieces have this sense of fracturing to them that leaves just the right amount of unresolved tension for a listener to be slightly off-put. Whether or not this is strictly allegorical for the state of anxiety that autistic people are put in is up for debate, but ‘Bicycle’ certainly is an album interested in looking into sonic equivalents for the day-to-day for those on the spectrum.
The melodies on hand are laid out in equal parts jovial and melancholic demeanor. They often are delivered through sharp synths or smooth pads, but sometimes come from Patricia’s vocal contributions — her shaky and often unfiltered approach to singing is maybe the one thing that hasn’t changed over the years. ‘Cavalry’ is perhaps the tiniest possible song that can still be reasonably called pop music until a bunch of building synths accompany short drums and raspy vocals to create something of a breakbeat groove. Only using instruments foreign to anything like The Prodigy or 4Hero and songwriting that feel more akin to mainstream EDM circa 2014.
Some tracks utilize the stuttering of loops to create more straight-forward compositions: ‘Boys’ is maybe the most reminiscent of the dub techno that Patricia openly claims to have influenced this work, with its monotonous bassline and synth whine that do not let up. It’s also evocative of a type of tried-and-true infatuation, choir-esque pads droning and pulsating with the subtle sadness yet beauty that I associate with old American barbershop song records. Patricia’s operatic motifs and IDM-inspired percussion here are nothing new, but in this context they’re given new life as this melancholic-yet-ethereal “cishet masculine furry” experience — it truly feels like I am looking into the eyes of a fuzzy dog boy riding a bicycle while wracked by thoughts too fragmented to speak on.
Patricia speaks of this ‘transcendental furriness’ in loads on her socials, and perhaps she’s channeled it before she made herself familiar with the concept — what is doubly true, however, is her newfound command of it in service of greater philosophical quandary about what it means to be yourself in a universe so vast. ‘Big Wheel’ may use imagery of claws instead of hands and floppy dog ears, but in its lyricism lies a question about the whims of the id as an anxious and impatient self-wanderer. It contrasts the unspeakable glory of Earth from up above with the unspeakable and unknowable of the psyche.
Do you feel like you’re dreaming? / Do you feel as if you’ll fall? / Do mountains lose their meaning when they seem this small? // Can you keep me a secret? / Don’t answer that, I know / Out here your vessel lies transparent to your soul
It is unspeakably autistic and mirrors some of the self-doubts and anxieties that naturally come with those with OCD or other obsessive thought-spiraling conditions such as mine. The lyrics sung in low register almost read like a burgeoning set of ideas cast into light after years of repression — it would be remiss of me not to think of this as an allegorical song about the early stages of realizing that one is transgender, though Patricia very well may not have sought such a specific idea. Whatever interpretation one does take, it is also not subtle or ashamed of its wailing and wobbly vocal delivery or its sudden break into dream-trance levels of verisimilitude and, dare-I-say, camp.
It’s these types of musical decisions and themes that make Patricia so special even after almost a decade of releasing music to the internet. It’s her introspection put through so many different loops and turns that her Bandcamp page feels almost akin to a diary. ‘Men’ on ‘Sky Simplified’ being a sardonic look into the psyche of a repressed gay man, ‘Punk’ becoming her political opus, ‘Doraemon’ coming to grips with the anger and self-hatred in her own head, and ‘Foley Artist’ depicting new trans fear with such visceral intensity that I still can’t listen to it to this day. The development of her public identity as a furry and as someone who reconciles with the most repressed and shunned parts of her psyche (key example being ‘The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe’) feels natural in this sense.
It’s with this progression that ‘Bicycle’ is a keystone from which she may stand to claim as a ‘new era’, a point of no return. This uncompromising, unflinching showcase of the self is not without controversy (as various class traitors on Tumblr and RYM will be chomping at the bit to point out) but it reflects a hope for understanding and amicability that I feel is sorely missing from the discussions of queer art online. That despite the encroaching bigotry of the world, despite the assimilation of fascist talking points in supposedly revolutionary circles, and despite the looming sense of hopelessness, there is always some autistic boy riding a bike and piecing his thoughts together.
