The Oratory Of Divine Love - "ARCHangel" CD

This experimental sound project of John Gore (of Cohort Records, 'kirchenkampf', etc.) has been silent for several years, but this 2-track, 60-minute album is a worthwhile bit of listening, and quite refreshing after too many black metal blastbeats and free jazz skronkings. 

Utiizing "only radios", and with "no overdubs", the album begins with "Part 1", which is a sort of urban ambience. It's full of subtle reverberations, laced with sounds you can almost make out, but it's all a swirl of foggy grey. It may even appear static to some ears, but upon closer listening, there's a lot going on. Imagine a busy intersection at rush hour, put the sounds into a blender and listen from the inside of a thick glass jar, if that gives you any indication.

"Part 2" is similar, but to these ears seems somehow darker, more spacious, and more forbidding. The deeply-resonating collage here resembles a cosmic disturbance, or a lonely journey down the fuselage of a deep space station. I consider that a good thing. 

"ARCHangel" is a work packed with depth and understated mystery. Definitely worth a listen.

(Cohort Records)

Mika Vainio - "Life (...It Eats You Up)" CD

One half of Finnish electro-acoustic deviants Pan Sonic, Vainio has been producing left-field electronica for many years now. This solo release presents his take on affected, processed, and prepared guitar.

On the relatively abstract 13-minute opener, "In Silence A Scream Takes A Heart", Vainio moves from a playful minimalism to overtly threatening tones, with huge, crushing, sustained guitar chords (something akin to Sunn O))) or Swans, perhaps). The ominous intents are continued, as "Throat" goes for a more blunt no-wave noise angle. "Mining" is a thick, rhythmic attack, with more jagged sounds alongside a primal, mantric beat-box rhythm. The cover of Iggy & The Stooges "Open Up And Bleed" is both cold and sleazy, like a soundtrack to an imaginary urban nightmare. The remaining tracks echo this sentiment, skirting the edges of abstract and soundtrack music, but with all the foreboding menace of a serial killer. Vainio is a world class sound manipulator, and this collection proves that his sources aren't as important as what he gets out of them. A stunning selection, and not for the faint of heart. (Editions Mego)

Mika Vainio site

PBK & Telepherique - "Noise-Ambient Connections" CD

This joining of forces of the American sound painter PBK and veteran German experimental group Telepherique here encompasses a fertile creative ground, and is titled more than appropriately, being a playful mesh of softly textural, bizarre and sometimes playful sound compositions. It all begins with the oddly surreal "Twilight Cue", which sounds like an electro-acoustic collage with samples and recordings of raw metal and primitive percussions (though perhaps more ambient than that description implies). "In Ecosystem Interrupt" is a mysterious set of sounds that evoke a dramatic cinematic scene in a plastic baggie factory (with strings)...on vinyl! "My Rare Dreams (Of The Future)" is a more structured, rhythmic mix of atmospheric guitars/bass and skittering, looping sounds, like an old 4AD band being mixed by Stefan Betke/Pole. "You Only Fade" soundtracks a late-night haunting in a factory, through a pixel haze, whereas "Seen Through Cloud Cover" closes it out with a spacious ambience. Overall, a heady and quirkily pleasing collision of sounds and abstracted textures. (Monochrome Vision Russia)

PBK site

PBK / C. Reider - "Discorporate" CDR

Ten years (off and on) in the making, this 7-track, 46-minute collaboration between drone composer C. Reider and abstractionist PBK is a curious and immersive set of noisy, textured, alien soundscapes, with a very proto-industrial feel. Beginning with the befuddling, loopily surreal opener (we'll call it 'Track 1'), the album gels into a far-out set of abstracted sounds, textures, and sound collages. Track 4 is a densely-collaged mass of squelch and what sounds like manipulated and layered field recordings. Track 5 is more woozy, like waking up from a horrible anesthesia experience with your head spinning and throbbing. Track 7 wakes from the dream to a lilting, ambient journey at the beach, complete with what seems like distant waves and seagulls (or was I imagining that? Didn't hear it the second time through). It's a fitting conclusion to an otherwise disorienting journey, and a marvelous one, at that. (Impulsy Stetoskopu)

PBKSound blog

c.reider's Vuzh Music blog

PBK works for FREE download

PBK is an acronym for Philip B. Klinger, and this sound artist from Michigan has been producing some amazing, transcendent music/sound for a long time, from his early cassette days to a variety of CD releases in recent years. PBK is a delightfully nice guy, as we struck up a correspondence years ago (in the dark ages pre-internet, where actual letters and tapes were exchanged). I've written plenty about his releases before, as can be read on my Godsend site here, and in this interview:

PBK interview for Godsend, 1996

Suffice to say, if you enjoy the occasional journey into highly visual experimental sound, with stops alongside noise and ambient, you will find some of PBK's abstracted soundtracks to your liking. This radio show, as broadcast in Belgium in 1994, covers a broad cross-section of PBK's sounds up to that point, and functions well as a 'best of', of sorts. Give it a listen here:

PBK Zenith Radio show

Additionally, his blog site offers a plentiful selection of his works for absolutely free, and I easily recommend just about anything here.

PBK's Sound Genetic site