Pan Sonic & Keiji Haino - "In The Studio" 2xLP

This unexpected meeting of the extreme music minds works out very well, with Finnish avante-electronic noisemongers Pan Sonic meeting up with Japanese psyche-guitar conceptualist Keiji Haino in a Berlin studio back in 2007. The resultant sound was captured and pressed up on this deluxe double vinyl, for you and me to enjoy and ponder. And "In The Studio" is a sheer joy to behold.

The brief "If I Could Incarnate This Feeling..." is little more than a minute of gutteral Haino shrieking, but "Imperious Doppelganger..." is a cavernous and percussive jazz-noise beast, with scattered beats, microphone distortions, and waves of sizzling electronics around the edges. Effective and disorienting. The primal and jarring "As Far As The Left Goes.." sees Haino's strained vocal madness and bowed guitar noodles accompanied by Pan Sonic's shrill, ear-splitting frequencies. "In The Hollow Between The Eyebrows..." is an ominous ambient hellscape, recalling early Lustmord. "Perhaps There Is No Need To Return" is a darkly introspective piece of psychedelic guitars and dark soundscape. "Preparation Is Unnecessary..." closes it out with a moody and organic drone.

Overall, a masterful work from some proven sound artists, with plenty of atmospheric & experimental flair. Top marks! (Blast First Petite)

Pan Sonic site

Pan Sonicspace

Keiji Haino 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

Thomas Dimuzio & Andre Custodio /Conure - "Street Of Errs" CDR

Another in the splendid split release series from Monticello, Indiana's Cohort Records, this one pairs a sound artist familiar to me with some relative obscurities, with mixed results. Famous veteran sound sculptor Dimuzio here collaborates with Bay Area improv drummer & electronic artist Custodio for a single 19-minute deep, ominous, and resonant drone, recorded live with electronic processing and spontaneous feedback, loops, and synths. The track, 'Air Way', feels much like falling into a deep, metallic cavern -- bleak and spacy, with plenty of reverb and unsettlingly cold textures. It is quite engrossing, and the full duration had passed me by without hardly noticing. The other track on 'Street Of Errs' comes from American noise artist Mark Wilson's Conure project. Recorded live at the Pussycat Lounge in New York City, the 27-minute 'Murray Street' is a thunderous, abrasive, and unforgiving feedback attack, with distortion and processing drowning out any of the street sounds that are the basis for this composition. This one's strictly for the more jaded noise-heads, as it's really pretty relentless. Still, it's enjoyable to hear some good old fashioned noise once in a while. (Cohort Records)

mp3 samples

The Infant Cycle / Dronaement "Split" CDR

A very fine set of abstract experimentalism from a couple of rather obscure sound artists, this is one in a continuing series from micro-indie Cohort Records (based in Monticello, IN of all places!).

The Infant Cycle is a Canadian artist (Jim DeJong) who has been releasing a steady stream of cassettes and cdrs since 1994. His 3 tracks here are subtle and understated soundtracks of varying tension and droning mood. His opening cut, 'Everything In Slow Motion', begins with a nicely bassy rhythm not unlike some of Lustmord's slow and deliberate semi-beat pieces. But whereas Lustmord surrounds his rhythms with lots of reverberations and spooky ambience, DeJong's track has a more playful air to it - and even a subtle tribal vibe. But it all ends rather abruptly as the track changes direction mid-song and becomes a faster-paced mantric drone and buzz. I liked the first half best. 'Field Musick For Marcus (Bag Of Hiss Life)' is a field recording of 'harbourfront' - a sedate and actually kind of calming soundscape, and 'Organ Music For You' is an obnoxious and 'industrial' sounding slice of shrill keyboard tones that evolves into a mellow ambient piece. Weird and schizophrenic.

Tucked in-between is a brief 40-second collaborative piece by both artists, and it's really barely there.

Dronaement is the loop/sample/field recording work of German composer Marcus Obst, and his series of 6 tracks are very quiet and receding in nature, pleasant and unobtrusive yet rather otherworldly and almost psychedelic at times ('Switch To Mono, Jim' is a good example of this confusing and inviting direction). He takes pride in NOT creating the usual dark and stifling industrial sounds, but wisely, he combines the dark with the light (after all, you can't have one without the other, eh?). His use of natural sounds (birdsongs, wind, maybe some insects or frogs?) is refreshing and lovely, too.

Overall, a mostly listenable selection of drone/ambient sounds to float away with, with an artful presentation (the disc is enclosed in a nicely-designed sleeve with informational insert). (Cohort Records)

The Infant Cycle

Dronaement

R.I.P. Donna Klemm and Artware Productions

Sad news to report here.

An old friend, from the glory days of Godsend Magazine, has passed away.

Donna Klemm, founder and head of extreme/experimental record label/mailorder source Artware Productions, died on June 17, 2008. She was 59 years old.

I befriended Donna in probably the early 90's or so, as my then-very active experimental/industrial music zine was at it's peak. She distributed it in Germany for me, and she also provided me with a top-notch international source for odd sounds, through her label (which released wonderful limited art-piece CDs from artists as diverse as Italian occult-industrial act Sigillum S, Canadian abstractionists Violence & The Sacred, Irish sound sculptor Roger Doyle, Belgian modern tribalists Hybryds, Dutch collagists De Fabriek, Paul Lemos and Joe Papa of Controlled Bleeding, the Dedication comp of international noise music, and plenty more). Her Artware mailorder catalog was an incredible resource for obscure and weird items, many unavailable elsewhere.

She was always kind and her letters were always a pleasure to receive.

We fell out of touch in the mid-late 90's, as my magazine slowly converted itself to an online entity, and I retracted a bit from the noise scene. She continued her mailorder source into the 2000's, though it seems she ceased label operations some years ago.

She was a true spirit and dedicated herself to her arts, and Donna Klemm will be missed. R.I.P.

For more info, visit the Artware site at:

Artware