Paul Kendall - Angleterror

A night out under the stars. Silence as a soundtrack. The rush of blood in your head being the only companion. This is an extremely isolated new album from Paul Kendall and there were two schools of thought which could have been employed reviewing it. The first, and obvious way was to isolate each element and pick it apart under the glaring intrusion of microscopic observation. The second, to let these songs out and realize their full development, giving them room to breathe, disseminating their contents into the air in much the same way smoke from a fire hangs heavily, imparting everything around it with an acrid taste. You can easily see which route I took as my mind is coated with the requisite residue of these breathtaking compositions. It is easy to be overcome by how much depth and range these seven pieces contain but I'll be tenacious and cover what I can before it drowns me.

"Glass Eye" commences 'Angleterror' by pulling one's mind wide open through it's use of organic sounds, unique progressions and the first example of the donated guitar phrasings this record is based around. "Starvation" ups the tempo into a loping, lumbering study in tense atmospheres, "Betricht" is where PK really cuts loose and delivers sparse majesty of the highest caliber. The feeling of descent into dark, murky waters of subconscious design and then psychedelic bursts of noises whose original sources I haven't a clue about. Waning light works extremely well with this one, the dancing flickers of perception becoming one with the strangely intriguing placements of unusually designed tones. To you and I, a guitar is just a guitar but to Kendall it's a departure point, a portal into bizarre, alien textures which are there for the taking if only one knows how to perceive and then capture them. There's a Digital Intervention reference in there, see if you can work it out because one of the first things that struck me about 'Angleterror' is how it was partially created at the same time he was wrapping his previous release up. Cross-pollination is what I'm getting at here, I think the bone chilling notes he uses to bring out a crescendo in "Wheel" are proof enough of just how long this album had been kicking around the inside of his head.

"Aspirateur" is most notable for how many different words can be extrapolated or pulled directly out of the title. I've managed to locate these ones: aspirate, privateer, irate and naturally, pirate. This one is the strangest of the bunch because of how it begins with clinking metallic sounds before building into what may have at sometime been a fuller orchestral arrangement which has been run through the grinder and given a new lease on life as excreted auditory wreckage. We move through the layers and take in the vistas before getting swept under by the absolute menace this song is comprised of. "Call of Wild" could be an exhortation to let loose the primal instincts our minds contain, it could be an homage to author Jack London or it could be Paul showing off how completely he can manipulate and then transform what is around him into his own design. Producers have a way of making their own material the most unconventional that they can, PK is no exception, he pushes it harder than people half his age and has no intention of giving you the safe and easy option of verses or choruses or deviously inserted hooks (although to me there are quite a few of those on here).

You wouldn't be far off the mark if by listening to this you arrived at the conclusions I have: when he sets his mind to it, this guy breaks not only boundaries but entire realms of perception; Recoil's last album "Subhuman" owes quite a debt to his abilities and that he should definitely seek out or be sought out by Danny Hyde to collaborate. The similarities between this album and Hyde's Aural Rage project are unnerving and should be investigated at some point. The human mind would be all the better for it's own development to have this glowing region of poisonous isotopes better explored. Oh yes, about that last track, "1+2", well let's just say that it puts the angle in the title of this release and leave it at that. If you don't want to be cut, skip it but odds are that you do. I'm bruised and grinning only wanting more because you see, for each listen I have of "Angleterror", I'm more and more unwilling to listen to anything less than the most uncompromising music I can find. My own tastes have been improved considerably by what Kendall's done, I don't know how he did it but I'm glad he did. Oct 16 2011