KOMMPOUND / PASCAL CRETAIN – “The Empathy Axis” double split 3inch CD
A double 3inch CD in an astonishing package, “The Empathy Axis” split-release epitomizes all that’s genuinely underground and spiritedly creative.
Kommpound (aka Panos Agoros of Straighthate fame) uses and abuses field recordings to deliver a cosmic ambience not dissimilar to that of KK Null. His part of “Empathy”, clocking in at around 20 minutes, could be described as a more atonal and monolithic, beat-free Odd Nosdam session.
Kommpound stands more on the ambient than on the harsh-noise side of things. “Sunny afternoon” evolves over a droning pattern that’s occasionally splashed with loud, discordant sounds. Samples from something like an afternoon TV show can be heard way in the back pervading the composition with an aura of every-day gloominess while Pascal Cretain’s ukulele comes to justify the “sunny” reference in the song’s title. Made up of similar constituents, “Balkan”, Kommpound’s second track, projects a more industrial and more “musical” at times, atmosphere.
Invoking security code as a thematic analogy for his sound, Pascal Cretain, both hacker and underground music enthusiast, manages, contrary to what one would expect, to get a remarkably coherent and well worked-out sense of composition rear up out of his sonic wreckage.
Pascal's experiment of turning lifeless computer code into sound stands out not only as particularly interesting but also as intriguingly challenging. “Denial of Service” sees its moody, humming sonic frame periodically interrupted by rhythmic pulses and menacing swoops of high - pitched, screeching noise while “The Sun Covered in 0s and 1s” kicks off with a slow-burning, dullish buzz just to let an ethereal Sunn O))) / Boris sample sneak in further down the road and shed “light” on its inhospitable, grey and grim soundscape.
Special salute should also go out to the outstanding black and white artwork and the extraordinary packaging done by Viral Graphics.
Limited to 128 handnumbered copies , “The Empathy Axis” is bound to become a much sought after rarity soon. Do yourselves a favor and get it while it’s there.
morethansounds.net/30 September 2007
