Piksel – Places

Modularfield

A squeal of metal and a wave of drone introduces Piksel‘s Places and throws you headlong into a dramatic situation with no time to prepare. Like the slow movement of enormous creatures, wings beating in subterranean isolation, things grind and shriek, and the oppressive drone pushes everything before it.

The album was originally written as the soundtrack for the multimedia show by Project Syntrex, a group integrating sound, image and movement to explore the issues of the day, but this release can easily be taken as a stand-alone experience. The two sides of the cassette are divided into tracks, but they merge seamlessly. A deathly wind, the tumultuous lashing of rain or the frying of mysterious circuits left unused for years.

The sounds begin to drop in and out as you question your hearing, then your hi-fi and then your sanity. Your ability to assimilate sound is doubted as a clattering rhythm emerges unexpectedly, distorted half-heard vocals slip by like shadows and the sound of chains dropping down lift shafts increases the relentless sense of disorientation.

At points, the heavy atmosphere drops away, allowing a new day to appear as warm keyboard droplets usher away the storm; the textured ache of sighs and the lonely moan of a cello introduce that monochromatic vista of a damp, misty garden. All thoughts of the subterranean beings of earlier swept away as the welcoming droplets take hold, but do not seem too secure. The cut-up and disembodied voices are a warning. Although woozy and drunken, it feels as though there is something you might regret at some point  — but the shuffling conclusion to the first side does its best to reassure, whispering in your ear and taking you on a circuitous journey through your daydreams.

The depth of feeling and the atmospheres conveyed here would certainly make for an immersive live experience, but as the tape begins its second side journey, those thoughts are submerged. A subliminal sweep, a removed drift of aqueous atmosphere opens side two like the calling of a mermaid. Underwater disorientation moves you with sinuous waves, rising and falling, calling then disappearing. Again, the tracks drift into one another as cymbals emerge, almost syncopated as they accompany the slow movement of a propeller through water. All is gauzey and the sounds are diffracted through the murky depths.

The simplicity of piano, cello and screws are rendered monochrome and bleary, an elegy to something lost unexpectedly; something you didn’t know was gone until you step out of the sea and look around. It appears the same, but is somehow different; and as you look, so the sound of the surf washes your memories away.

-Mr Olivetti-