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PACIFIC 231 - Micromega

Format: LP & USB-stick Label & Cat.Number: Silent Media SM003 Release Year: 2013 Note: digitally processed guitar-sounds on the vinyl + a 35 min. video on the USB-stick; comes in special gatefold cover & on splatter coloured vinyl; collector's item by the legendary French post-industrial project, lim. 250 Price (incl. 19% VAT): €33.00 Warning: Currently we do not have this album in stock! More Info "Micromega is an electric guitar experiment in processing, cut-up, and real time de-instrumentation. The 180 gram splatter vinyl LP comes with a wafer USB drive containing 5.1 surround sound videos. Micromega does not waver from the unremitting stream of staggering output from Pacific 231. The two +17 minutes long audio pieces move from pulsing tides of wide-eyed warmth, to blistering and barren landscapes, and back to a reformed transcendence with the fluency and skill of a seasoned musical hand. Pacific 231 is the moniker of Pierre Jolivet, a French born sound artist currently living in Ireland and working on his PhD in Brainwave & Sensorial Perception Research through Sound, Colour & Space: Integrating Multi-sensory output in performance. Pierre has been a formative entity in new, industrial, and post-industrial music since the early 80's." [label info] "A true beauty to watch and hear here. A nice piece of spotted vinyl, a gatefold sleeve and a usb flash drive thingy with a thirty-five minute movie to the music. Pierre Jolivet, the man who named himself after a train (and a musical piece by Arthur Honneger), has been active since the early 80s and such I should/could know his work pretty well. I don't, actually. For whatever reasons lost in the mist of time, I have a very blurry idea about his music from those days and then, perhaps due to his moving to Ireland to work on his PhD in 'brainwave and sensorial perception applied to sound art', long periods in which we didn't hear any of his music. So in close to twenty years of Vital Weekly you might find only one review of his work, in Vital Weekly 630, a live recording from his in Russia, which was all about 'advanced feedback technology, based on the manipulation of sounds through motion sensors feeding and controlling a projected visual imagery' and there has been a track on a compilation from the same label who know release his LP/usb. Here he works with 'live de-instrumentation cut-up […] drawing inspiration from the work of Lou Reed, Brian Eno, Alvin Lucier and LaMonte Young'. Based on what I saw, Brian Eno, is the one that comes closest, both in terms of audio and video. The music is made with a 'single electric guitar, processed to fuse resonant cords with loop sequences in a stereophonic dialogue'. That makes already something that is too 'maxima', and not 'minimal' (Young) or 'conceptually minimal' (Lucier). The music has no longer anything to do with even remotely industrial music, but its a nice work of computer processed guitar music which has become some fine ambient music. The video consists of super-imposed loops of close-up imagery of guitars, making all sorts of different patterns and changes of colors, which works in a fine way, maybe even psychedelic; but perhaps the music is part of that psychedelic edge too. It bounces nicely about, as this is not the kind of drone music that would be common place in the world of ambient, but rather sounds like the opening chords of ambient dance record, but then that's looped and minimally changed throughout the entire thirty-some length of the LP and the movie. Minimally, but if you would skip parts and check shorter fragments you will note that the music has changed completely and it's a bit colder than in the opening sequences. But of course one should 'skip' records but play them in their entire form. This record is an excellent one, an overall great package, well executed and consistent in its high quality. It has probably nothing to do with his music from so many years ago, but then, I should probably check that one day, again. This record made me curious about the question: what did I miss back then?" [FdW/Vital Weekly] www.silentmediaprojects.com