Sven
This may seem to be calm, but it is in fact rather unsettling - an excellent collaboration. I'd be happy to find more Omit on bc. And it would be great if P. Toohey's Surface of the Earth were here, too.
Favorite track: Replace.
"Not a split release by these two New Zealand artists, but a collaboration, carrying on from their 1997 single on Colorful Clouds for Acoustics. The weapons of choice are analogue synthesizers and the approach is slowly unfolding drones and drifting veils of sound that part and close across the listeners third ear like storms on the surface of Jupiter.
K-Group is Paul Toohey, previously of noted NZ geological drone ensemble Surface of the Earth, who also has a solo album under this name on Corpus Hermeticum. Omit is Clinton Williams, who has also recorded for that notorious NZ un-easy listening label, as well as extensively on his own Deep Skin imprint.
During 2000 and 2001, having failed to bring down the global economy with their now-forgotten Y2K scam [remember Y2K? - I thought not], this pair of Hidden Masters turned their efforts towards late-night kitchen jam sessions during their holiday moments. In these each would fire up an antiquated analogue synth and the resulting aural collisions would be recorded on a handy hard drive, then tweaked, inverted, eqd and edited to produce the immaculate slabs of sound contained within the tiny grooves of this ludicrously out-dated analogue sound-reproducing format.
These seven tracks simulate the calm of the newly sedated patient about to undergo a surgical procedure, just as he or she is starting to slip into unconsciousness. You can listen, but just when you think youre hearing something, you realise that 12 hours have gone by and you have a new and inexplicable scar on some unlikely part of your anatomy. Too late you realise that the sound you can hear at the very edge of audition is not this recording, but the sound of forty metal robotic insects starting to eat their way out through your still-sedated navel.
Waking with a start in time to flip the album over on your turntable, you notice that subsonic frequencies have begun to rearrange the contents of your mantlepiece into a veritable Morris Dance of inanimate objects, when you thought the audio had not yet begun to play back. A vestigial bass throb starts up in the back of your cranium, as very slow-moving if not actually stationary spacecraft begin to land in the garden. Three days later they are still hovering as the seventh and final track of thr album begins to play, and infinitesimally subtle stereo effects start panning in impossible permutations audible only between your shoulder blades. Apparent suspension of time, delirious interludes, interference with the basic laws of physics, all of these effects are possible results of listening to the beautifully poised, finely polished and unutterably beautiful sounds contained in this simultaneously forbidding and inviting artifact.
If, like me, these are all the things you look for in a sound recording, then look no further. If its merely music you require, then I suggest you meddle not in the affairs of your betters and proceed directly to the nearest chain CD store and stock up big time." -Bruce Russell [Noise Legend], Lyttelton, NZ, May 2002.
Excellent experimental drone record and the first album for a very long time from Kiwi Paul Toohey. In the past he has recorded for Bruce Russell's Corpus Hermeticum label. Fine credentials indeed. Gavin Hellyer
When it comes to Omit i only have the 5xCD compilation on Pica Disk so we are not talking about a major gap in my little record collection but a black hole when it comes to this very fine artist.
Omit somehow manages to produce vast journeys into his sonic universe with a minimum of sounds and even if some of his track are 20 minutes long they evolve almost without you noticing it and that is one of the things that makes me like Omit and like him a lot at that.
This is a must have release. Finn of Tomland
Megadead offers a set of meditative, carefully constructured experimental pieces that capture a longing for escapism. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 24, 2023
A forward-looking record that imagines the future of Rio de Janeiro, built on intimate textures, ambient, drone, classical, and bossa nova. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 4, 2017
Canadian producer and multi-instrumentalist galvanizes bowed guitars, cellos, and synths into an off-kilter exploration of heat and desire. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 25, 2024
Easily the loudest, most overpowering and greatest “New Zealand drone/noise” album. There’s good reason this scorcher has been reissued so damn many times. It sounds as if you’re sitting inside a roaring jet engine for an hour; nearly featureless top-volume sandblasting with deeply narcotic side effects. The very best album of its kind and one of my all-time favorite albums by anyone. Howard Stelzer