Artist : Kevin Drumm
Title : Imperial Distortion
Genre : Ambient
Year : 2008
Date : 08/08/2009
Bitrate : VBR kbps
Tracks : 06
Label : Hospital Productions
Source : CDDA
Encoder : Lame 3.97
Length : cd1: 53:26 cd2: 50:43
Size : 121,4 MB
Tracklist:
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cd1
01.Guillain-Barre 17:24
02.More Blood And Guts 19:58
03.Snow 16:04
cd2
01.Snow 18:45
02.Romantic Sores 18:33
03.We All Get It In The End 13:25
-------
104:09 min
From Boomkat:
Very occasionally a record comes along that we just don't want to review, a record so wondrous that
words just seem to fall short. Since we have an urge to persuade anyone who crosses our path to hear
'Imperial Distortion', though, perhaps it's worth a shot nonetheless. Dominick Fernow's Hospital imprint
has long impressed us with its output, but never before have we heard anything quite like 'Imperial
Distortion' slip out of its ornate iron gates. Those of you in the know will already be aware of the label's
noise-laden psychosexual tendencies, and those of you familiar with Kevin Drumm will no doubt be
expecting a harsh onslaught of sound to scare your loved ones, but think again. Mego's genre-defining
'Sheer Hellish Miasma' might have set Drumm up as America's premier exponent of grinding noise, but
'Imperial Distortion' is a very different beast indeed and confirms that Drumm is simply one of the most
important figures in the American avant garde. A bumper two CDs of music, this is to my mind the post
millennial answer to Aphex Twin's seminal 'Selected Ambient Works II'. Where Richard D. James created
a floating world hooked into his lucid dreams (or so he led us to believe), Drumm takes us into the darkest
recesses of a broken world, somewhere deep beneath the sea with bombs and guns tearing flesh and
concrete overhead. The album is something of an escape; the subtle oscillations and blissful tones thick
with guilt and pregnant with disdain for a palsied society, and on headphones leave you totally paralysed.
Comparable to the early electronic experiments of French composer Eliane Radigue or the BBC
Radiophonic Workshop if they ditched the sci-fi for torture porn, there is a deep and rarely witnessed
knowledge of the medium on show here. Drumm is no newcomer to the scene and isn't jumping on or off
any bandwagon, rather this is a totally timeless collection of work. If you really need proof check 'Romantic
Sores', maybe the softest moment on the album, a track which builds from subtle pad-work into haunting
and devastatingly beautiful synthesized notes which phase and pan assuredly, dragging you into a blurry,
confused world. At first listen it sounds deceptively simple but each second is painstakingly constructed
and the more you play these tracks the more you become drawn into Drumm's imagination, never to
return. Like Stephan Mathieu's 'Radioland' or The Caretaker's 'Persistent Repetition of Phrases' earlier this
year, 'Imperial Distortion' seems to have slipped out from nowhere and captured our hearts. It is a record
that is bound to be fighting for the top spot in many an end-of-year chart, and to put it bluntly you just need
to experience it. Highest possible recommendation "Imperial Distortion" really is quite a find.
http://www.hospitalproductions.com