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Petit Mal - Dreamcycle Second album for Petit Mal, faithful to the Zenflesh label which released his first "A distance quietly removed", and still limited to 111 copies in cardboard sleeves. This time, this San Francisco act offers us only two tracks, "Dreamcycle", lasting for 57 minutes, and "Burnt remains" that plays for 13 minutes. In my review of "A distance quietly removed", I wrote that Petit Mal had gotten softer and more dreamy than what I had heard of him before, and this is the proof I was wrong. Both tracks on "Dreamcycle" are noisy and distorted, with a lot a creaking sound and high frequencies. Still very various, this second album doesn't have the accoustic atmosphere of its predecessor (no guitars in this one), and sounds heavier, denser, and more electronically conceived (in a way, more "industrial"). The rhythm of Petit Mal's music hasn't changed, however, and we still get here a lot of long drones and distant sounds, echoed, tweaked and pasted on top of each other. The album starts quite calmly, but as it progresses, more and more noises are added, culminating in a very thick combination (close to Petit Mal's offering on his split cassette with Stolen Light). Darker than "A distance quietly removed", it's is also less ambient,. The music on "Dreamcycle" fits well the photo on the back of the sleeve: this is an album of dirt, ashes, audio chaos, cigarettes butts and alcohol. Still quite organic, but more poisonous and less poetic than before, the title track made me think of what Ah Cama-Sotz would sound like if his tracks were purely instrumental (no samples in here) and were to last an hour. Petit Mal is for sure an underrated band that a lot of people need to check out before it's too late (read: before it's sold out). I found "Dreamcycle" to be less of a true album than "A distance quielt removed", and more a long and successful experimentations with slighlty more aggressive sounds. Anyway, the talent is obvious here, and Petit Mal deserves everybody's recognition. Nicolas, January 12, 2001 - recycleyourears |