Narcosis

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 2008-11-30

Label: The Sound Genetic

recorded 1990
all sounds: pbk

Notes from website: "PBK: This album, "Narcosis", was created during the very productive, though personally tumultuous, year of 1990. After working closely with Vidna Obmana on two collaborative releases, I found myself still trying to define the concept of "ambient noise". (please see the "Depression And Ideal" listing for further correlations) One answer was that ambient noise could be environmental sounds, or 'field recordings'. But that didn't suit me personally for two reasons: 1. because I wanted to have a very strong hand in the improvisational aspects of composing, and 2. I didn't want the kind of imagery that would result from self-referential associations to field recordings. If I was going to use any kind of location recordings in my compositions, they were going to have to be used in a unique way. Only later in the 90's, when I began collaborating with Slavek Kwi, aka Artificial Memory Trace, did I have the confidence to use environmental sounds in my work.

I wanted my sounds to be largely unidentifiable, but definitely machine based. I became very interested in composing via sets of self-driven sequencers running simultaneously and at different speeds. I would set up various sounds and samples rather randomly and live-mix everything straight to a metal cassette master.

In retrospect I can definitely see "Narcosis" as a response to Vidna Obmana's co-opting of my ambient style. When he returned to Belgium in 1989 and started using all of the same equipment and methods I'd showed him in creating my ambient compositions, this pushed me in a different direction. Where Vidna Obmana worked very carefully, I was flippant, any type of sound might be used. Later the poster for my performance in Paris, France (1996) listed: "PBK: Trash Electronics et Crepitements".(i.e. 'cracklings')

To me, Vidna Obmana's music was more typical ambient music because the imagery was always about nature and had sort of cosmic, or 'new age' themes, especially as he began to work with guys like Steve Roach whose whole career seems to be dedicated to those ideas. I hated pastoral imagery and wanted my music to correlate only to the world(s) of art, philosophy and science. Having grown up in the automobile factory culture of Flint, Michigan, "noise" made sense to me as a reflection of my personal experience living in the cradle of a dying industrial culture which I hated yet drew inspiration from. The compositions on this recording fall somewhere between industrial noise, mechanical drone and space music, a form later referred to as 'assault ambient' by one critic(Glen Thrasher)."