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Petit Mal - A Sense of Closure Petit Mal's new full length album is a new trip through this musician's introvert semi-improvisations. Once again, Jim Kaiser seems to use a bit of everything, from slowed down samples, repetitive drones and accoustic guitars to write slow, throbbing and repetitive tracks that get really quickly hypnotic and mesmerizing. And even though this is not the first time I review something frm Petit Mal, I still find it difficult to describe his music. More than often, the tracks are full of really slow and bass-filled slow elements that are sometimes saturated, but stays always quite calm. When it is used, the accoustic guitar plays very nostalgic melodies, but seems to go without a precise scheme, Petit Mal improvising or using over and over a scheme that fits the evolving electronic background. And the whole thing sounds a bit accoustic indeed, coming out of abused samplers and unusual devices rather than precise digital synthesizers. A bit blurry, not really structured, "A sense of closure" is the kind of CD that flows really nicely and never becomes loud, but is yet intense and avoids being only a experimental and atmospheric things. A lot of efforts are put in the textures of the tracks, with very interesting ones coming out of what could be fields recordings (for example on "Too late (the last goodbye" or "A unsightly emotional outburst"). Often echoed, "A sense of closure" has a dub aspect, and numbs the listener into a kind of slow, calm but sad state. All in all, "A sense of closure" is a really dreamy CD, that takes Petit Mal's to a new high, with a really interesting mood, even though no track really stands out. Closer to "A distance quietly removed" than to the other works I know from him, this is a nice way to discover Petit Mal. 70 copies of this album come with a two track CDR, containing "Obsessive", an exclusive track made of old TV samples that is a bit too long and repetitive to me, and "Compulsive", a better one, recorded live and quite noisy for Petit Mal. Showing another side of this guy's music, this CDR is nice, but doesn't equal the music on the regular CD, and people who bought the regular version haven't lost that much. Nicolas, January 15th, 2002 - recycleyourears Petit Mal - A Sense of Closure Petit Mal is, as the sleeve notes put it, "Jim Kaiser and an array of broken equipment". This new recording represents Petit Mal's most imaginative and most diverse outing to date: the cracked strum that characterised previous releases energised by thoughtful excursions into increasingly bizarre territory. Two particularly successful tracks in this context are 'An Unsightly Emotional Outburst', with its drifting voices at sea on a raft of radio static, and 'Bones of a Brittle Nature', a pounding, nebulous mass of distortion. Sandwiched between these two efforts, the fifteen minute long 'Too Late (The Last Goodbye)' provides another highlight, with a swarm of brooding menace rising painfully from an unmade bed of whining electronics. Melancholy, pensive and fragile, Petit Mal makes great early morning listening: specifically great hangover listening. Good music for sitting staring out of the bedroom window at the pouring rain and contemplating stringing yourself up over the stairwell too, come to that. Expressive, visual and strangely calming - despite its uneasiness - A Sense of Closure sounds a lot like Alan (Knurl) Bloor's recordings under the 'Pholde' moniker: thoughtful, disturbing stuff. Friedrich Nietzsche once commented that God cannot recommend a king, but that doesn't stop this Gott recommending this Kaiser. It is a great shame that this excellent recording is not more widely available: those of you fortunate enough to live in the vicinity of LA can buy it at an Amoeba store, everybody else should head for the Zenflesh website http://www.zenflesh.com where the disc may be purchased online. 70 copies come with an exclusive 2 track CDR, available only through mailorder. I didn't get a copy, so I can't comment on it, but my understanding is that the two tracks on offer are entitled 'Obsessive' and 'Compulsive', and are in the same experimental vein as the main album, albeit noisier. STEWART GOTT - 27 February 2002 - fluxeuropa PETIT MAL A Sense Of Closure (Zenflesh) Petit Mal is the work of Berkeley musician Jim Kaiser, who improvises through a post-Industrial context to arrive at deep hypnotic ambience marred by vocal samples, broken effects, and metallic scrapings. Dark murky drones dominate "A Sense Of Closure," often recalling the densely processed sounds of Troum or Cranioclast. Yet Kaiser is often much looser in his compositions than either of those references, allowing for distortion, misfirings, and analogue errors to accumulate within the overlapping washes of sound. "A Sense Of Closure" is at its best when Kaiser picks up an acoustic guitar to splutter textured strumming not unlike the groundswell of damaged avant-folk (i.e. Neil Campbell, Avarus, Dead Raven Choir, etc.) within the omnipresent dark ambience. Aquarius Records PETIT MAL - "A Sense of Closure" Emotional dark drifts and subtle melody, CD, this version contains additional CDR lmt. to 70, Excellent. Crionic Mind |