EST2 Record Reviews Reviews are by Brian Duguid, except: [MG] Marc Gascoigne

Arcane Device / P.G.R.

Fetish CD (Silent Records SR 9009) 52 minutes

This release presents one long composition by David Myers of Arcane Device, and four shorter ones by Kim Cascone's Poison Gas Research. Arcane Device's piece uses only rhythmically repeated short and sustained long feedback tones, but contains a remarkable amount of variety all the same. It's something like an inexplicable alien communication, vibrations, static and resonances with no conventional meaning but still an ability to transmit feelings. A sort of sonic body language, gestures and positions that you understand only unconsciously. P.G.R. attempts something similar with the use of a sampler and various sound effects, creating slow, billowing, quietly droning clouds of ominous sounding vapour. Ambient music with a paranoid aura that can't help but leave you feeling uneasy. It's soft and minimal enough to remind me of some of the more extreme American minimalist composers like La Monte Young, and suffers the same problem of potentially inducing boredom in a listener who doesn't come to it with the right attitude. [Available from Silent Records; or try RRRecords]