Album: The Subconscious Palace
Artist: Pendro
Label: Kafka’s Kitten
Catalogue no: KK13
Tracklist:
1. Caught
Circuits
2. Troposphere
3. Revolt
& Relapse
4. Slow-motion
Satori
5. Neon
Reverie
6. House
on the Hill
7. A
Merging of Effigies
8. Dappled
Light Movements
9. Chewing
the Frequencies
10. The
Obsidian Axis
11. Mirage
of Fear
12. An
Insect Eye
The Kafka’s Kitten music
label operates out of Gainesville, Florida, and this is the first of their
releases I’ve reviewed. I found this by rifling through some of the Facebook
groups devoted to non-mainstream underground and experimental music and just happened
upon a link to it. Don’t ask me why, but for some enigmatic reason I just felt
attracted to investigate it and so I did. I’m glad I did as it turned out to be
a little treasure-house of joyful experimentation and sonic exploration.
Starting with a kind of
looped rattle in a tin can noise, ‘Caught Circuits’ hastily develops into an
electronic maelstrom, including rasps, blips and bleeps, rhythmic sequences,
overloaded circuitry, and some crunchiness. Overall the effect is joyful, in a
species of “let’s turn this thing on and see what happens” way. As the gateway
to this album, it’s a promising beginning. Now onto ‘Troposphere’, which the
title implied that it would be more of an ambient adventure, and I was proved
right: shimmering and clangorous metallic planes, ebbing and flowing
gracefully, sometimes soaring high and at other times swinging low to the
ground.
And the above is,
essentially, the tenor of the album, an unapologetic exercise in creating short
sketches of moods, feelings, and impressions of fleeting moments, as if caught
by a high-speed camera. Colour and texture are in abundance, the artist daubing
on his ‘paint’ thickly with thick, rapid, imprecise strokes at some points, but
then at others with a studied determination. These are more like tableaux or
vignettes, suggesting that Pendro uses an approach akin to that of the Impressionist
painters: creating textures and shapes suggestive of movements and atmospheres,
leaving out extraneous and unnecessary detail, so that the imagination can fill
in the blanks.
As noted in the paragraph
above, this isn’t a canvas necessarily restricted to a particular style; rather
each piece is shaped in the style most suited to the idea or mood expressed.
Some lean heavily to the experimental category, while a piece like ‘Neon
Reverie’ has almost a ‘pop’ feel to it, albeit one that has its own definition
of what that term means. A watery/metallic percussive backbeat is the constant
anchor in this one, while some clean ambient chords and a counterpoint rhythm
loop twinkle repeatedly just under it. One can easily imagine a rainy city, in
the early hours of the morning, when there are still a few people around but
the large crowds have thinned out considerably, and the neon advertising is
still flashing garishly on concrete and water. There’s a particular ambience
surrounding it that’s lushly redolent of nights like that. An eerie ringing
atonality swoops in on ‘House on the Hill’, the following piece, which conjures
up images of an old house abandoned after its last owner died, and given over
to nature to become a place of wild stories and rumours. Another example of the
range on offer here is “Chewing the Frequencies’, an off-kilter swirling
ambient outing that has an alarming edginess to it that keeps trying to pull it
back to earth.
Probably my personal
favourite on The Subconscious Palace has
to be ‘The Obsidian Axis’, which starts off as a beautifully uplifting series
of musical drones that fly high, circle, intertwine, and chase each other
before being subject to a discordant interruption that disturbs the
equilibrium. This counterbalance creates uneasy and disconcerting notes,
threatening to destroy whatever harmony there is – which it never quite manages
to do.
The spectrum of colours,
tones, and essences displayed here is kaleidoscopic, as they constantly shift
texturally and sonically, with ideas emerging and dissolving, looping around
each other, then follow, interweave, or be absorbed and ejected, so that
nothing appears to stay still. On the face of it, it might seem to be complex
in nature but, just like the Impressionist painters I alluded to above, when
looked at more closely is actually composed of simple elements that serve as a
framework. However, Pendro constructs these impressions and sketches in such a
way that conjunctions and superimpositions fill in all the gaps, or perhaps
provide the necessary clues to enable the listener to do so. And the result is
a delightful album that is much bigger and broader than it might at first
appear, and far more interesting in terms of the overall effect it will have on
those who indulge in its many-hued treasures.
Available as a digital
album only from Bandcamp:
Psymon Marshall 2019.
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