Vuzh Music Blog

PBK’s newest CD “Under My Breath” has been potentially ‘about to be released’ for much of the last decade. Thankfully for all of us who are fans of his work, the release is finally available.
–
The release features a diverse assortment of highly abstract soundwork, with collaborators such as Aube, Wolf Eyes, Artificial Memory Trace, Tore Boe, Christian Renou (from Brume), Nigel Ayers (from Nocturnal Emissions), John Wiggins, Dale Lloyd and C. Reider (that’s me!)
–
PBK’s completely unique compositional style is well suited to a release like this, where a diverse group of collaborators contribute a varied sound palette. He draws strongly on the distinct characters of electroacoustic, musique concréte, ambient and noise musics in his sound. Each song presents a completely new atmosphere, in which there is a feeling of motion through a sort of “painting” or “landscape”, where new features lurch unexpectedly into view with quivering, crackling energies.
–
On this new album, there is a kind of highly tense melancholy, a kind of mixture of fear and sadness, leading directly to his concept… if I may quote:

“The main control utilized by any government is “fear” as it relates to personal safety. We see this quite clearly in the U.S. since the events of 9/11. They turn huge populaces into quivering paranoiacs through media saturation and cold-war tactics. So came this idea that if anything were to be said out loud that was contrary to the “approved” line of thinking, that it would have to be said secretly, quietly, or “under the breath”

–
On a personal note, his use of source material I originally used on my early 2001 release some things I did when I lost my mind, connects this album to that time period very strongly for me. I think this music could not come from any other time period.
–
The Russian label Waystyx has published the CD in a very handsome die-cut cover, with graphic elements interweaving with the cut elements. The inside recording notes and song titles can only be read in the reflection of the CD itself, which is a pretty clever presentation.
–
You could go to PBK’s website for more information on how to order the CD. It is highly recommended by me.
–
One more quote from PBK about the new CD:

“The project was conceived to be similar to my “Life-Sense Revoked” CD relase from a few years ago, i.e a sort-of all-star collaborative recording with friends of mine whose music I admire. My personal goal with this was to achieve a new kind of ambient music for the 2000’s, one which incorporates musique concrete elements, turntable experimentalism and some of the textural elements which have been showing up in my work for years. I feel that this is a brilliant release and I hope you will enjoy listening to it as well. The guests on this recording are among my most cherished friends working in avant garde music today. I realize the odds are against us, we work in an area of sound production where neglect is the order of the day, we can’t get paid for our music, we self-release our work quite often just to document what we are doing. We continue to work against the odds in our own little corners of the world, striving to take our life experiences and turn them into art. Hopefully this release will help us gain a little wider audience, especially in the Eastern European and Russian communities where their ears seem to be really wide open and hungry for new sounds.”

–
If you are interested to hear more PBK work featuring collaborative work with C. Reider, (in anticipation of our full length collab CD which should hopefully come out this Summer) I recommend (very strongly) his excellent CD “Headmix”, which has been recently made available as a free download from his SoundGenetic blog. It’s also available in its entirety on Last.FM, right here.