New Zealand's guitarist Peter Wright
used field recordings and acoustic instruments to manufacture the
oneiric dronescapes of
Distant Bombs (Apoplexy, 2002 - Last Visible Dog, 2004),
The Broken Kawai (Pseudoarcana, 2003),
and the 70-minute piece of Transfusion (Last Visible Dog, 2002).
Desolation Beauty Violence (Foxglove, 2004 - Ikuisuus, 2005) is
de facto a philosophical meditation that uses the language of static sounds.
Above Lewis Pass mixes
tender electronic pattern and dissonant found noise to secrete a
majestic drone that evokes a superhuman horizon.
The static vibration of Adrift At 30,000 Ft is actually a multi-faceted
experience that arises from a multitude of ghostly entities to evoke
infinite emptiness.
The manipulated voices of Kashmir compose a slowly decaying mural of
frantic human life that eventually reveals its rotting fabric.
The 19-minute Evening At Ben Ohau emerges slowly from a sideral mist,
a fragile "om" at the center of a mighty galaxy, a uniform pulsing radiation
that permeates spacetime.
The feeble Leaving Town feels like a sleepy guitarist
strumming a country tune to the moon.
The came
Yellow Horizon (PseudoArcana, 2005), including the the 13-minute Offa's Dyke and the nine-minute minimalist piece Bannockburn,
and Red Lion (2006).
The double-disc At Last New Dawn (2007) stood as a compendium of the
techniques that he had absorbed until that day.
Natural sounds are prominent at the beginning of
Urban Wolves but then they disappear in a vortex of metallic and
airplane-like drones. One can tell how sophisticated Wright's mixing art has
become by the way that different drones coexist in the same orbit.
Another droning mass, The Whole Facade Will Come Crumbling Down,
is another exercise in decay like Kashmir,
as the wall of noise slowly decomposes into natural and found sounds.
Wright is less successful when he goes for a cinematic experience.
The noise of people processed in Death Ships Approaching becomes
a sinister hissing crescendo reminiscent of sci-fi soundtracks.
The distorted mass that emerges from the languid tones of
Punishment Drugs represents his version of the "psychedelic freak-out".
Both sacrifice depth for evolution with mixed results.
The album also ventures off the beaten track of droning compositions.
The 18-minute The Big Fight is the most ambitious experiment because it
begins with a random accumulation of tones (possibly from musical instruments).
They get stretched and amplified until they form a gargantuan cacophony,
a symphony of incoherent signs.
The 34-minute At Last New Dawn begins in an equally unstable mode but
then the diverse parts coalesce in a majestic drone. A sitar-like source
pens the equivalent of a soaring cosmic hymn on top of this colossal drone
and eventually the two merge into a deafening wall of distortion.
Pretty Mushroom Clouds (aRCHIVE, 2008) seems to focus more on
transformation than exploration.
Submerged In Ice/(Broadway Approx 6PM) is the morphing of a
booming drone until it gives birth to ordinary traffic.
Ash follows a mediocre drone as it self-destroys.
Blisters (possibly the best one) is all movement, collision and
surprise, the closest Wright ever got to a collage form.
However the most impressive achievement comes with the 24-minute
The Devil Wears Sunroof, a sharp drilling ear-splitting drone
that does mutate but only in timbre, not quite in dynamics.
By the end it feels like a Jimi Hendrix solo.
The three-disc set Pariahs Sing Om (Last Visible Dog, 2006) compiles
Duna (Last Visible Dog, 2000), A Tiny Camp In The Wilderness (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 2001),
Pariahs Sing Om (Apoplexy, 2003), with Esoteria and the 13-minute Pariahs Sing Om, and Catch A Spear As It Flies (Celebrate PSI Phenomenon, 2002), one of his best, containing the 25-minute The Bride Stripped Bare.
The double-disc Snow Blind (Install, 2009)
juxtaposed different ambient techniques and moodscapes.
The Drunken Master In His Crumbling Citadel surrounds a voice with
distorted drones that by the end display an almost melodic counterpoint.
It is Apakura, that begins in the most tortured of manners, to
deliver one of the rare soothing (almost new-age) atmospheres in Wright's repertory.
The 21-minute The Distopian National Anthem starts out with
tinkling bells and a soft murmur, and then meanders in search of the perfect
timbre.
The 15-minute With Teeth Like That You Can't Help But Succeed is
an avalanche of loud noises leeft to battle each other in utter chaos.
To compensate for the self-indulging tendency of some of these pieces,
the 25-minute Truth Serum is a satori of agonizing drones and jarring
drones, one of his most intense works.
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