[reviews] afe100cd
logoplasm: testa piena d'orche

Logoplasm are a strange project. A quick glance through their website shows that most of their work has never been formally released and, indeed, the band themselves don't seem to be in any hurry to push their music to the fore. For someone used to the hyperbole and excessive marketing of music today this may well seem strange but exposure to Logoplasm's music makes you understand this approach completely.

There's a Lethean quality of forgetfulness and intense introspection that emanates from the breezy sounds that these two Italians created that makes you imagine it coming from some languid, dream-state where such petty things as material releases become little more than inconsequential ephemera. Even the label, the very fine Afe Records, have an easy come/easy go approach to releasing records. It's a delicately pure approach to music that's quite refreshing.

"Testa piena d'orche" (Head Full of Killer Whales), Logoplasm's single-track mini-album, starts off with a suitably pure tone that's thickened by a throbbing void-bass reminiscent of nothing so much as The Orb's "Earth (Gaia)". This spatial theme is reinforced by the slow introduction of haunting choral sounds; imagine the searing voices of Ligeti's Requiem or the Orbital/Kamen soundtrack to Event Horizon. Disturbing and ominous, it remains dreamlike in its surreal intensity.

Wind chimes and laughing voices add to the mix as the choral work dies down – the sleeper has passed through fever into a gentle place of remembrance that fades down into restful slumber as digital cicadas click and whirr.

From somewhere, far off and distant, comes the slow resonance of a plucked guitar. It fades as a dog barks, leaves rustle and electronic drones echo overhead, raining electricity from static skies. Eastern drones and pipes merge with AM radio crackles in a channeling of fellow Oneironauts Coil where voices fall into huge chasms of pure tone.

The analogy of dreams is a good one for this recording. Like the shifting vistas and experiences of the most profound dreams, found-sound recordings and instrumentation meld in a strange, yet wholly coherent way. Bodiless voices seem almost familiar and common sounds – rain, wind, animals – take on the eerie, displaced sheen of the dream-lands (even the band's press release for this CD is scattered and self-reflexive, requiring arrows and footnotes to explain) and, like a dream, this record follows you even after it's finished. Thin, mist-like threads twirl around your head, laughter and barking dogs echo in your ears.

So, Logoplasm are a strange project and "Testa piena d'orche" is a strange record. Disjointed and meandering it sounds weak on paper but oh-so perfect in actuality. Maybe, like the best dreams, this can only make sense to the dreamer.

[Gaendaal]