Pimmon – Smudge Another Yesterday

“Smudge Another Yesterday is an exploration of the song behind the noise; the secret whispers hidden in the static.” So says the press release accompanying revered sound sculptor Pimmon’s first full length release in over five years. What exactly “the song behind the noise” is or could be, I’m not exactly sure. Nor is it explicit upon listening. Maybe it means looking at the fabric of sound as one would look at life under a microscope, finding patterns and interconnections that provide a deeper understanding of the subject in question. Or maybe it’s just a nice sounding platitude. Still, I’m intrigued by the statement.

Fennesz, Ekkehard Ehlers, and other contemporaries have done some great but fairly inscrutable work within the converse proposition, “the noise behind the song.” This is especially true on their Plays releases which deconstruct other pieces or ideas to illuminate something elemental about a particular song or aesthetic. Ryoji Ikeda’s recent releases Dataplex and Test Pattern, which use diverse raw data sources converted into manipulable audio files as sound sources for music are much closer to “the song behind the noise” than anything off of Smudge Another Yesterday. The second part of the press release’s claim which suggests Pimmon’s music is “the secret whispers hidden in the static” is a much more accurate appraisal of what’s going on here. This music is slowly pulsing, morphing white noise, sometimes moaning, sometimes playing fanfares in super slow-mo. Most of it is fairly well done. Depending on how much exposure you’ve had to this kind of stuff, this release could be revelatory, or it could feel like more of the same, done well, but playing it safe. I’d vote for the latter.

Now, I’m being tough on this release, but not because I think it sounds unaccomplished. I’m being tough because it made me doubt myself as a listener. If, like me, you consider yourself a fan of this vein of music (the vein of building slowly developing pieces through textural manipulation) you really do have to look yourself in the mirror once in a while and say “Really?” It’s just part of the game we play with ourselves. Sometimes that ends up being a good thing, like when you find reason to justify pushing the acceptable boundaries of enjoyment further out. But it can also hasten the well-known existential crisis of the restless listener, who asks the further question “Am I starting to miss the substance for the style?” And while it’s great that Smudge Another Yesterday has provoked me to ask the former question, it hasn’t fully persuaded me to dismiss the latter.

Lead track “Come On Join the Choir Invisible!” comes out of the gates with a choral drone. It’s well-executed in its timbre and kind of dreamy with its representation of angelic breathing/singing, but this type of drone is also predictable and overdone. It’s like sound art’s equivalent of the obligatory hip-hop skit. “Evil Household Ceremony” follows more abrasively with a twitching microbeat and wild sounds similar to tapes being rewound and sputtering robots, all over the top a sustained synthy sound. Neat sounds but they don’t play off each other or develop much. On to the third track, “It Will Never Snow in Sidney”, which is the album’s first triumph. It starts with some brittle rumbling suggestive of the inner workings of the Earth or rocket boosters. Along the way, it morphs and swells with a human and animal presence, pitting slower sounds that aren’t vocalizations but which sound like singing and whispering against faster sounds which sound like a giant flock of birds or missiles flying overhead. As it comes to a head and dissolves back to its starting point, it’s been not only sonically interesting to follow but emotionally powerful. Too bad it’s followed by “Don’t Remember”, a strange, trippy piece which feels tossed together and undercooked, and “Hidden”, which is the second obligatory-feeling move which features an overdriven church organ drone which goes on too long and changes too little.

“Dervieux” is a late high point, enlisting an encroaching beat, an eerily modulating and buzzing bed of synths, and a memory-stained keyboard loop reminiscent of Boards of Canada. It’s followed by “On Whollsee”, another nice moment which combines a Basinski-esque loop with some more angelic choral sounds, neither one dominant in the mix, and playing off of each other to melancholic effect. The album ends with 15 minutes of semi-harsh chaos called “Some Days Are Tones”. I don’t know which is more terrifying, the sound of the piece or the prospect of listening to it again from start to finish.

I don’t think anyone would claim Smudge Another Yesterday is an easy listen. If you are a fan of noise sculpture and ambient dronescapes, you could do worse than seeking this out for a listen. Odds are you’ll like it. As for me, it’s been great to revisit the “Really?” question. Three of the eight tracks helped me answer that in the affirmative. However, the other five tracks did little to dispel my skepticism of the way formal conventions attach themselves to even the most aloof genres, settling for the comforts of a well-known style over of the challenge of substance. Pimmon’s personal artistic voice, which on this album seems so strong at its heights, ends up averaged out by the weaker tracks, left to languish in the subcultural ether as an undistinguished genre association.

Pimmon

Preservation Records