Pelican / Mono Split [coll] – [Temporary Residence Ltd.]

Battle of the behemoths, and the winner is….James Plotkin.
He zaps in with a remix of “Angel Tears” going well beyond
glitch into *splotch*. It’s still got Pelican’s anchor of
bloodied bass and battered drums, but before we get the
chrome choruses of recognizable guitar, we traipse through
a nice minefield of minced meatiness. Plotkin leaves it
alone for a few bars of lurch and torch, but some speaker
squelch starts to re-infect it, and then he starts picking
at the whole scab leaving whorling chunks and a crisp cold
end. Pelican’s “Rain Amber” starts with an escher staircase
of organ, and moody bassy piano with (intentional?) ripples
of psuedo-vinyl warp…then come the burnished guitars and
cymbal shining drums and a comfortable anthemic march.
Japan’s Mono fires up the ol’ wind-tunnel dynamics machine
better than any non Black Emperor’s going. They stoke it
with hyper-arpeggio guitars with tight galactic reverb…
….ahhhhhh. The piece has a near-death experience about
half-way through, you can see the life-line in the vinyl,
but then guitarists Takaakira Goto and Yoda soon clamp
jumper-cables to your auditory nerves. Mono definitely
delivers an invisible soundtrack beckoning a film to be
made…nice work from all camps.