CD, Sound on Probabtion, 2010
www.soundonprobation.com
The split release “Sonology” introduces Kinetix (Gianluca Becuzzi) to the Sound on Probation label alongside new material from Pylône (Laurent Perrier). Comprised of six compositions, the album sees Kinetix and Pylône balancing one another in a remarkable cohesion of spacious subconscious architectures. Pylône delivers a signature cool and metallic sound, while Kinetix reflects much of the same but with a more protean, less detached disposition.
Kinetix begins “Sonology” with two 20-minute compositions. “Untitled 1” introduces a warm ambient drone to metallic prickles and shuffling, clicking sounds. These reverberations are eventually superseded by a windswept void, which in turn mingles with twitching, scratchy insertions and sedate wobbling. “Untitled 2” is more diverse – more of a story of sorts – setting off with slight scratches followed by a shocking bass surge, continuing with a circular drone and a male voice speaking French. A brief stint of white noise is cut abruptly with pounding bass, which itself is reigned in by two delicate, half-whispered feminine syllables (“lu-na”). The piece rapidly transitions into fragmented vocal samples, curiously fascinating in the absence of other sounds, and from there evolves into spacey, stretched weirdness. It closes with the famed monologue from Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room (1969).
“Sonology” shifts attention to Pylône for its remaining four tracks, which are significantly shorter. Disconcerting noise in “Untitled 3” sustains the weirdness Kinetix initiated: murky croaking, shifting and tingling sounds occupy the fore while deep rumbling presses at the edges. Chaotic, alien noises burble and twist, eventually unleashing further scratching and static splashing. Pylône’s ingredients are occasionally rhythmic, like the clicks and bass of “Untitled 4” or the repetitive high-voltage bursts driving “Untitled 5”, but are overall characterized by creaking and tensile sounds, elements that remind vaguely of an electronic wetness – the inscrutable marriage of physical energy to organic form. Especially “Untitled 6” shivers with a creeping quietude, its dark ambient textures meditative in contrast to the magnificent hypnotic growling of “Untitled 5”.
Both artists are masters of subtle movement and minuscule fluctuations, and both also express an aesthetic that escapes the constraints of time, casting the listener into uncharted depths filled with drones and half-formed sentience. “Sonology” is an excursion in perception and sublimity, and a fine example of artistic alignment. Kinetix and Pylône understand each other and employ similar precision in their craft. “Sonology” establishes that applying various pressures to stress and loosen sound can be a science itself.
[7/10]
— Dutton Hauhart