EIVIBLEIVI, under whose sign this album appears, is shaped by the conviction that the possibility of transcendent experiences is one of music’s most powerful qualities. Its emblem — the project’s eponymous landmark — expresses this idea through a stylized magnetic field, drawing an analogy between music and magnetism and thus embodying a metaphysical phenomenon: music as a force that exerts an organizing, i.e., meaningful, influence on those receptive to it.

Self Service is an electronic music album that simultaneously exaggerates and challenges this dogma in a gently satirical manner. By implying a dubious religion of self-deification through suggestive titles and cover artwork, the six tracks reflect on contemporary capitalist societies that sacrifice community and solidarity for a value system based on narcissism and greed. Expressed through the juxtaposition of spiritually evocative music with lapidary titles drawn from the corporate, religious-commercial, and self-optimization spectrum, Self Service purposefully undermines itself in pursuit of deeper truths: the infinite promise of “Almost There”; the troubled angels in “Virtual Assistance”; the catastrophic climax of “Better Each Day”; the faith-based financing of “Prayer for Money Help”; a sneak peek into the spiritual-industrial facilities of “Staff Only”; and the horrifying beauty of a potentially immoral “Full Acquittal.”

By identifying an abandoned fast-food restaurant as a church through the double meaning of “service,” the album artwork further blurs the threshold between the sacred and the profane, reflecting the inseparability of moral categories such as “inspiration” and “delusion,” as well as “the pure” and “the corrupted.” Sounds, images, and objects become symbols of a certain ideology, only to be reinterpreted in the iconoclastic backlash. This occurs across centuries, across cultures, and within individuals who are skeptical of their own beliefs — or the composer, skeptical of his own music.