PATINA POOLING (WITH FOSSIL AEROSOL MINING PROJECT)

Zoviet France (now spelling :zoviet*france:) are very much alive and well as of 2018 although I can't track all their work down that was done in the meantime. However, I bought "Patina Pooling" on a recent live gig. This CD comes in a pretty heavy rusty steel case, great for those who love this kind of "art", not quite as great for those who buy it for the music only and have to pay extra for the fancy packaging. I'm fine with this and it looks great, and in any case the music was worth the expense. The CD was a collaboration with the Fossil Aerosol Mining Project from Chicago, who seem to be about as prolific as :zoviet*france: in the experimental electronic music szene.

What we're getting is a mature and confident collection of avantgarde electronic soundscapes of various lengths, starting from the short presentation of a texture to longer compositions with quite a bit of variation. Mostly this is atmospheric, sounds are lively and breathing and rich, but only very rarely sharp or percussive, although rhythmic parts can be found here and there. The amount of variety and change that we get is certainly above average for this kind of project, but still nothing about this is nervous or restless. Sometimes it's like watching the sea or the sky but many parts are actually more busy, evoking forgotten parts of a city, with trains and occasionally people coming and going at a distance, and perhaps the odd sign of life turning up directly in front of us. I'm probably not the best for describing what goes on here and pure real music is for the ears, not for being explained in words. As a fan of Holger Czukay I appreciate how these sounds generate something deep and lively, peaceful but never bland and never standing still. The traces of actual human creation are much less obvious in such sound design than when messing around with (even manipulated) electric guitars or other conventional instruments (as Zoviet France did in the old days); the sounds seem to come out of nowhere and disappear into nothingness again, staying with us for the eternity of a moment to give the ear some contact with something higher and less tangible than what we normally deal with in our lives (and even prog music).

Obviously this is not the first time this kind of thing has been done, and obviously only a minority here will be interested in it, but anyway, it's very good stuff!