Another very good release delivered by postman in a packet with Ukranian stamps from Kvitnu, the industrious label by greatly respected artist Zavoloka bears the signature of Plaster, bicephalous electronic freak born from two skilled Italian sound forgers, Giuseppe Carlini and Giancarlo Hashem Moniri, whose headquarters are in the chaotic Rome, a metropolis where there are the best conditions for electronic musicians’ inspiration (alienation, sociopathies and a rich sample collection of behaviourial disorders and mental diseases, multiculturalism, contradictions, impressive cultural and social asymmetries, urban brutal landscapes, human feelings’ slaughterhouses and so on), but where there’re just some small hotbeds for electronic music, which are still too small to be considered as a scene. In spite of such a situation, Rome sometimes delivers some very interesting stuff (I could mention Lory D, D’Arcangelo brothers, DSP recordings for instance…and some of you knows some of them reached important goals such as signature with legendary labels like Rephlex) and Plaster could reasonably be considered one welcome gift from that scene. The method they use in order to assemble their electromechanical structures seems to be more or less the same for each track as Plaster like gradual ascensional progression according to a compositional scheme based on the crossbreed of deep bass tones (looking like a mechanical unlabored ventilation, a sort of robotic eupnea, or an involuntary muscle contraction…) with subtle, cinematic and more or less highlighted sonic swarm, reminding to me the style of projects such as Autechre (many click’n’bleeps whirls recalled to my mind their masterpiece Tri Repetae), Hecq, Ltd.Noise or Denny Almonde, a scheme which seduced many notorious bands as well (Depeche Mode, Young Gods, Nine Inch Nails and so on), overloading speakers till peaks of saturation. Sometimes they depart from crystalline sounds, but instead of cleansing frequencies it seems they like to zoom on impurities, so that if you follow the progression of a bass tone, listeners could almost renderize its gradual indentation, especially in tracks like “Rearline”, “Component” and “Double Connection” (a track where Christina Gasparetto interprets a sentence taken from “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle). The conceptual framework explaining the title (Platforms) they have chosen refers to a mental journey through the flow of music, where each track turns into a sort of platform, i.e. a point where listeners can stop or start again and again like in life through routes, with large or narrow corridors, obstacles, blurred visions, confusing or neat directions and so on. A nice way to describe their release, but I’m sure many listeners will appreciate it without embracing such a perspective. The Cd has been enhanced with the inclusion of a videoclip by David Terranova, titled “Lydia K”, looking like the vision of a dancer who gradually lose the perception of space. I warmly reccomend Plaster’s sonic prophylaxis as well as I could reccomend to pay attention when pulling cd out from its card package!
Original is here: http://www.chaindlk.com/reviews/?id=6866