Another collaboration by Rapoon and PAS Musique emerges as the two-disc set Knowledge Has No Enemies But The Ignorant (ZOHARUM ZOHAR 364-2).
The team of Robin Storey and Robert L. Pepper continue to enjoy a productive working arrangement, and while I think we last heard them with their 2019 release Composited Reality – a title which neatly alludes to their method of audio construction, or at least one aspect of it – there have been other items on the Alrealon Musique label which we missed, such as Confluences 1, Confluences 2, and also People That Don’t Exist (on Ultra-Prod.) I have previously been overwhelmed by the clotted layers which emanate from their magical opened palms, but today’s offering is far more restrained, and finally a fellow can breathe. True, the familiar looping and ambient elements continue to dance their mad swirls, but there aren’t quite as many strata of hardened mulch to pick through with the icepick, and the pair have reined in their predilection for excessive transformations and mutations in the studio workbench. This allows us to better appreciate their skills at audio construction – tracks never follow a pre-determined grid structure, and simply meander along compellingly like a vast river across an open meadow. The more “downbeat” items, such as ‘Unsuspecting Angel’ or ‘Lost in my Closet’, bring a wistful and introspective dimension to the set.
“It seems the two gentlemen have found a common language,” is the claim of the label’s press department. Not only that, but they seem to have found a better mode of co-operating, without getting in each other’s way. (22/10/2025)