Sunday, September 27, 2009

Joxfield ProjeX Bits And Pieces # 1- 13 (Clinical Archives)


I ought to admit I do have a little knowledge about Swedish avant-garde music. Fixing the mind on this I am able to name only some examples having came from the end of the 70`s and the first half of the 80s. Early Blue Nun, Cosmic Overdose, and young Arvid Tuba as well. Recently I figured out that there have been two musicians behind the pseudonyms Oax, and Yan who have collaborated since the end of the 60`s, although Joxfield ProjeX itself was established in 2005.

Supposed that they are aged men, maybe with white long beards too, but thanks to their long-running musical experience they are still generating the sound which is far more innovate than the most young musicians are able to create nowadays. Up to 2009 they had released lots of albums on the label Tin Can Music. In the recent year all 3 albums (in fact, some days ago they issued their fourth album already!) have been released under Clinical Archives. Yes, I can`t go without spruiking them. All their albums are masterpieces in itself.

The album Picnic is dominated by ambient dub, and ambient techno tunes in a bit narrower range respectively. Homogeneous yet decorous drift of hesychastic sounds of which best days were ended up by the first half of the 90s.

Virtual Dreams & Realities consists of 2 tracks - the first of them is long of 43 minutes and divided in 11 parts. By conceptual side you can find huge similarities with Faust`s The Faust Tapes, though, by sonic facade it is more angular and schizoid. All the music presented here ranges from sound fragments of rural ambience to metronomic rhythm machine, space rock and kosmische musik as well. Faust, Gong, Canterbury scene seem to be some differentiable influences among others, as I would suppose. It might be the Finnish bands like Kospel Zeithorn, and Ester Poland are the closest kindred spirits of them nowadays. However, it is quite hard work to describe all those events happening throughout this track. The another track bases on a pulsating techno beat and vocal sample, which are surrounded by different kind of sonic and voice effects moving more or less chaotically around the basic axis.

Bits And Pieces # 1 – 13 consists of 2-3-minutes tracks, which in the context of Joxfield ProjeX does mean the tracks with shorter duration as usually used to be. 13 tracks in 35 minutes.
The artists and writers sampled here are Guillaume Apollinaire, Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, James Joyce, Allen Ginsberg, William S Burroughs, and Ezra Pound as well. Yet, it can`t be considered as a spoken word album in a narrow sense of this word. The basic essence of the album is developed into a vast threedimensionality, having conquered by flowing industrial-sounding guitar riffs and cosmic synth grooves. While the track Black Light returns to the concept of the album Picnic. Bits And Pieces... may have a surreal point of view just to open up in front of us the dilation of outer space in the form of music and nondescript incantation of those aforementioned dadaists and beatniks. Upon listening to vibrating buzz of the final track As Conceptual As... I would like to think a journey that started somewhere in the rangeland on Virtual Dreams & Realities has reached the middle point of outer space. Of course, it is my own fiction based on my choice to get bobbled the queue of three albums.

Actually it does not make any difference what kind of way will this album be criticized - face-to-face with another albums or in absolute way. The result used to be evenhandedly powerful and impressive anyway.

Download it from here

9.2