Thanks to WILL-E for the subject line. This one's short. Only one review
this time.
PW 13 Psychonavigation
1 Psychic and UFO Revelations in the Last Days 38.46
2 Angel Tech 10.17
3 Black Dawn 21.22
Psychonavigation is Pete Namlook + Bill Laswell. Laswell, of Material/Axiom/
Divination fame brings out the weirdness of Namlook. Namlook's usual knob
twiddling is accentuated and exaggerated with the help of Laswell.
1- Starts out with some hollow droning sounds and some odd whirrs, hums and
beeps. In comes a LOW bass and a kind of weak beat, which gets lost in the
sea of bass until it is strengthened by a deep thump and a cool bassline.
A breathy synth melody rides over the top while the beat/bass fades away and
comes back a few times. It mellows out at the end and ends with some tweaked
noises. Interestingly, there's a sample that says, "We seek contact with other
life forms" which appears to be stolen from Captain Picard from TNG. Which
reminds me, does anyone know where that Orbital "where time becomes a loop"
sample comes from? ;) ;) ;)
2- Ten minutes of just totally strange warped and mutated noises spanning
all frequencies. Totally beatless. Ironically, there is a C major scale
being played in the background, just to show how tweaked the tones are.
3- Very beautiful, with some knob twiddling that brings in a string like
emotional melody. A beat comes in and is reinforced with the low thump and
a bassline once again. Nice.
All in all, there is a lot of unrealized potential here. After hearing "Dead
Slow"' (Ambient Dub vol.2--Laswell's, not Beyond's) I expected a lot more
rhythmically, while this release sort of ignores the beat and goes for the
bass. I had to turn down the mega-bass thing on my discman cause the bass was
too much and was hurting my ears (on a volume level of 2!). So I guess if
you heard this on a big system it's blow you away. I'm also wondering if anyone
knows what PW 12 is. I seem to have missed it. If anyone's seen it, please
let me know.
Thanks for your time,
Jonathan
eabu751@orion.oac.uci.edu