Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Fabio Orsi & Pimmon ~ Procrastination


Good things come to those who wait! In this case it’s the long-anticipated, heavyweight pairing on Home Normal featuring Fabio Orsi and Pimmon. For those familiar with the world of drone and experimental artists, these two need no introduction. Orsi is a figurehead in the Italian (and world) experimental / psych scene and is constantly pushing his craft into new worlds via collaborations and a steady output of genre-bending work. The Australia-based Pimmon (Paul Gough) favors a ghostly glitch style that reveals its hidden secrets through close inspection. This pairing of the sonorous and the subdued makes for a gorgeous adventure through a series of active and revelatory environments.

The four soundscapes here are lengthy and virulent. Each unique world spins like a small moon, its features sparkling like many plankton at varying depths. These pieces are highly dynamic, sonically speaking, with all kinds of sounds and patterns twisting like polar winds or flocks of birds in and around the ears. When Giuseppe Ielasi masters a record, headphones deliver the full package. In “Garnacha” Orsi’s slowly fermenting melodies are beaten by Pimmon’s weather and miniscule detritus, each gentle barrage mutating along the way. There’s a lot going on, but the overall effect is that of welcome paralysis in the listener. If we were cryogenically frozen, this would be a potential soundtrack.

Each composition reaches an omega density, sometimes beginning that way, and holds this intensity throughout before calming at the closing curtain. “I Wish You Were In Yallingup” does just that, opening with some alarm-like skree before the graceful mass of drones and space absorbs it. When Orsi and Pimmon dive right in, the white burst of bubbles quickly reveal a coral reef of soothing complexity. There is no letdown or compositional theatrics. “Just One More” however quietly starts with the equivalent of glitchy candlelight, and effortlessly blooms into a gorgeous closing piece. Soft pings and glistening guitar fragments are brushed with skeletal static. It is easy to imagine prismatic flowers opening on a field of cloud. Lovely!

Folks who have been patiently waiting for Procrastination to be released since last year are hopefully enjoying the growing humor. The combination of the album’s title and cover originally felt more like a cheap project name rather than an inspired accompaniment to the music. It actually came about after Pimmon stewed helplessly on Orsi’s shared pieces (ones he immediatley considered “fully realised”). He essentially had writer’s block for 18 months and worked on other projects before the dam broke and the transformations took shape for this album. And once the chosen vinyl cutting machines broke down for a lengthy period, causing more delays, the theme has become deftly appropriate*! There is an optimism to this title, indicating that projects put on the back burner, for no matter how long, can be approached and completed with new knowledge and enthusiasm right now.

*Orsi and Pimmon’s collaborative follow-up Abandoned, however, will unfortunately never see the light of day.

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