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Zenflesh Records Reviews
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PETIT MAL - A Distance Quietly Removed CD-R
This is one of the best things I was ever able to listen to ! It’s a very good example that a good release doesn’t need big studio techniques (I’m sure this was recorded by using simple equipment, but the result is amazing !).
Seems like this CD-R was recorded just using analog synth and an acoustic guitar. The synth is used to create calm, dark and minimal soundscapes in the background while the guitar is played more loud, first distorted and used more for creating effects, later in a musical context. This CD-R has a very dark and melancholic mood, but not like the average dark ambient stuff, it’s a feeling like you walk through a forest in a time between summer and autumn, it’s not really cold but summer’s almost dying, the leafs are falling down.
One of my faves of 1999 (there are not many) and one of my alltime faves ! lim 111 (zenflesh records po box 252065 LA CA 90025 USA www.zenflesh.com) -© S.W. 04/30/99
tronikzine

Petit Mal A Distance Quietly Removed
Last night's attempts to get a decent six hours sleep having been ruined by the excesses of an unnecessarily brutal thunderstorm, coupled with the sounds of a big fox (at least that's what I hope it was) waging frantic blitzkrieg on the garden fence with appropriately hideous growly barks and screeches, what better to turn to in the sour light of morning but the happy sounds of another Zenflesh release. This one, from Petit Mal (aka Jim Kaiser) offers "an intense look at claustrophobia through the eyes of a drunken bastard". It's a subdued, melancholy affair of distorted guitar rumble, with the same sort of twangy pastoral pensiveness and unease that characterises the more successful passages of Pink Floyd's Ummagumma. A complex document, the best parts for me are the four brief (untitled) links and the longish final track - "denial of desire" - where weirdness is firmly to the forefront; cracked hillbilly strum doing battle with malfunctioning tapes and unsettling mechanical hums and clanks. This is a thoughtful, detailed and disturbing recording which repays careful attention: Zenflesh once again wriggle free of possible genre definition, which can only be a good thing. According to the ever-informative Zenflesh website (http://www.zenflesh.com) - from where the disc can be obtained - Jim Kaiser "sobered up long enough" to record this album, but "he's been drinking since then". Round the back of the house the fence bears deep claw marks courtesy of my nocturnal visitor. He'll be back again tonight, no doubt.
STEWART GOTT - 2 November 2000 fluxeuropa
 
Petit Mal - A Distance Quietly Removed
"A distance quietly removed" is, as far as I know, the first full length album by the San Francisco based Petit Mal project. This act, who already appeared on a split CD with Turk Knife Pope as well as on a split tape with Stolen Light seems to have here settled down a musical orientation, of cold and echoed accoustic noises and tunes.

"A distance quietly removed" is made up of short tracks alternating with longer (10-15 minutes) ones, but plays like one long continuous composition, without any gaps. It slowly evolves and changes, but always stays calm and more or less relaxing. The basic material used here seems to be accoustically recorded from various installations (and a guitar on some parts). A lot of effects are added to the sounds, and the whole thing is ample and spacey. Carrying a feeling of decay and sadness, but not being overly dark, it has (I repeat myself, even other might disagree with this comparison) a bit of a Godspeed you black emperor! feeling, in the way this tris to move the listener and stays rather low-fi and ever changing, from the disillusionned slow guitar to the strange samples of the beginning to the voices (are they really voices) of "Returning: a sort of requiem".

Very original and maybe not as noisy as Petit Mal's previous appearances, "A distance quietly removed" is a very enjoyable CD, that will come back to your CD player every time you're in the mood for something different from the usual noise scene, something that sounds a semi improvised introvert trip. Charming, soft and weird.

Nicolas, December 19, 2000 - recycleyourears

 
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