French electronic composer Laurent Perrier appearing today as Pylône with two long tracks on A Jamais / Ping (SOUND ON PROBATION LP SOP 019). On each, he explores two basic methods or approaches and sees how far he can push it. On ‘A Jamais’, he manipulates recordings of the voice and writings of Lyne Vermes, producing thereby a bewildering journey down the language rabbit hole, with plenty of half-completed phrases and fragments of spoken word. The treatments get ever stranger the deeper we go in, at times producing rather terrifying electronic timbral cut-offs, clangs, squeals, and echoing passages. Lyne Vermes does drawings as well as poetry, writings, and performance art; her ink and wash images are right up my alley, plenty of visceral imagery and personal pain expressed in every stroke. Pylône doesn’t quite capture that rawness, but he still turns in a fine blast of voice-based electric mayhem.
The follow-up piece ‘Ping’ is nowhere near as compelling for me; he did it from audio produced from a twinpeak filter, whatever this may be, and it’s mostly a process work of semi-automatic audio generation. On the other hand, it exhibits similar qualities to the voice piece, affording him an opportunity to clash together as many different shapes, textures and blocks of sound as he can feasibly get his hands on. No denying the assurance and confidence with which he assembles his content here. From 4th February 2019.