Pimmon | Kinetica
K-RAA-K3 | CD
This is Australian artist Pimmon's second full-length CD release; the first was on Japanese label Meme and a further is imminent on Fällt, Ireland.
The sleeve notes suggest that his tools are a "PC and sundry devices" and this is, without doubt, the truth. It is hard to deny that what we hear has either been processed in the digital domain or is entirely computer generated. But it might equally be a collection of field recordings of what, most of the time, sound like micro-industrial machinery in busy steady-state...
The tracks on Kinetica sound like real places, as if mics. have simply been opened at some safe distance only to be clicked off some minutes later without further intervention. Industrial perhaps, but Pimmon's is a sound-world charged with melody and subtle rhythm - ringing, crackling, fluttering, buzzing, shimmering and droning.
On 'circumlocation' a taut copper wire armature vibrates between the poles of a humming electromagnet while 'between the heart' bleats regularly like an echo-sounder deep within a sea of brooding low-end. 'buzz like blue children' flares with incandescent tones, blinding eyes accustomed to the gloom of the previous track fittingly titled 'directory is empty'. Comparisons? 'emapanar : redactar' sounds not unlike Oval with its droning organ and attendant glitchery and the aforementioned 'directory is empty' is populated by the teeming micro-digital lifeforms which also populate the work of Florian Hecker.
Contrary to what some might think regarding the overt or exclusive use of digital processes and techniques, Pimmon has created here sound-worlds which, although unpeopled, are never cold, inhuman or completely inhospitable. Worthy destinations certainly.
[GM]
