d’Eon’s “Foxconn I” Is A Response To The Human Cost Of Corporate Greed

In 2012, Montreal producer d’Eon made two tracks that were "reactions to the 19 tragic suicides of Foxconn employees in China." If you google the Foxconn suicides, alongside the many news articles you'll see a brief Wikipedia page that lists the names, ages, and suicide details of the employees of the multinational electronics manufacturing company. If you look a little closer you'll see a chilling pattern: "fell from building" is the most common recorded suicide for the young factory workers, who were largely in their late teens and early 20s. That "fell" feels like a betrayal: a way to further disempower a human being who felt they only had one choice left in the face of horrific working conditions.

On "Foxconn I," which is finally being released as part of a record on Kuedo and Joe Shakespeare’s Knives label, a computer generated voice seems to cry what in a warped tone of disbelief through chimes and tones that veer from contemplative to claustrophobic. "19 people who had dreams for the future, who hoped to achieve the same things as anybody else in the world, didn't have a chance to live their own lives, working under horrifying conditions just to manufacture our electronics," d'Eon told The FADER. "I made these tracks on a MacBook, making me 100% guilty of perpetuating fatally exploitative labor practices in countries so far away that I can't see the human cost." Knives will release d'Eon's Foxconn / Trios on November 27th.