Andrea Pensado – Ktotam CD

Zeromoon

This is my first exposure to the work of Andrea Pensado and I can sense immediately that this is in the vein of free improvisation/academic style work. The noises are of the start/stop variety with intense variation. Differing so much at one time that it begins to blend together. There are many spastic breakthroughs of acoustic and contemporary classical samples of music that tend toward acoustic instrumentation and voice.

The bulk of the disc presents glitch style sounds, crackles and piecemeal. I’m guessing granulation is a heavily used process in much of Ktotam, as well as distortion. Much of this doesn’t do it for me as there is a lot of glitchy lo-fi noise which is very sparse and to me merely sounds like a broken cable. There are moments where Pensado breaks the mold more consistently beginning at the end of Desconcierto (1) and continuing through Desconcierto (2) which features some great cut-up noise barrages, and some noticeable panning that is quite effective. Generally any area of heavier, denser noise textures and fast movement appeal to me more, where the subtle lo-fi long passages of digital crackling and sputtering samples bleeding through tend to be quite dry. Unfortunately the bulk of the disc falls into the latter category.

This disc will appeal to those interested in moments of silence, quiet sounds, manipulation of vocals and classical instruments and especially glitch aficionados. As for me I prefer more exploration of space, texture, and energy something which Ktotam doesn’t really confront.

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