KMXT FreeForm Radio: July 2022

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Closure/Continuation is the eleventh studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. The album is their first since 2009's The Incident. Despite public uncertainty of the band's future after frontman Steven Wilson's focus on a solo career in 2010, the album was recorded intermittently in complete secrecy among Wilson, Gavin Harrison, and Richard Barbieri across the course of the following decade, without long-time bassist Colin Edwin. With the COVID-19 pandemic putting members' separate plans on hold, the band found time to completely finish the album in September 2021. Towards the end of the year, the band's reformation was publicly announced, alongside the album's release date of 24 June 2022. Four singles were released ahead of the album—"Harridan", "Of the New Day", "Herd Culling", and "Rats Return".

Reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	71/100^[36]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	^[37]
Classic Rock	^[38]
The Guardian	^[39]
Metal Injection	9/10^[40]
Pitchfork	6.9/10^[41]
PopMatters	^[42]
Record Collector	^[28]
Slant Magazine	^[43]
Sputnikmusic	4/5^[44]

Prior to release, Loudwire named the album one of their most anticipated rock and metal albums in 2022.^[45] Upon release, the album was generally well-received, receiving an average rating of 71 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on eight reviews.^[36] Metal Injection praised the album for being "an outstanding and endearing comeback...while it doesn't bring anything new to the table...what it does accomplish and induce is quite exemplary".^[40] AllMusic concluded that the album was "A welcome new entry in PT's catalog" that shows that "the band have plenty left to say".^[37] Record Collector noted that while the album "perhaps misses the conceptual cogency of earlier Tree peaks", ultimately it "weds a reinvigorated affirmation of band identity to expansive energies, all to confident effect".^[28]

^{Read more about Continuation/Closure here.}

The Dystopian World of J.G.Ballard

by Various Artists

Project: Ambient Sonology 2
Concept: ZeroK

In April 2009, J. G. Ballard died at the age of 78. By the end of his life he was recognised as one of the greatest British writers of the latter half of the twentieth century. The acclaim his work has garnered stems from its unsettling ability to describe the present in collision with near but unexpected futures. His narratives operate according to the temporalities of car crashes, epidemics, and physiological shocks. The word ‘Ballardian’ has entered the Collins Dictionary as a term denoting ‘dystopian modernity’.

The fiction of J. G. Ballard delves deep into the human psyche, not only by exploring the relationships between its characters, but also by conveying the cityscape in terms of the mind. Either real or imaginary, the urban spaces reflect and are reflected by the minds of the protagonists. Influenced by the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, the Jungian model of the psyche, the experiments in anti-psychiatry initiated by R.D. Laing, as well as the technological advancements of the new millennium, Ballard proposes a new type of fiction. The aim of his pursuit is to answer some of the pressing issues that the self is confronted with in an urban milieu which is gradually becoming more dehumanized and impersonal.

“The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology.”

J.G. Ballard

With this present compilation, curated by Raffaele Pezzella (Sonologyst), ZeroK label (in collaboration with, Lars Bröndum, Eraldo Bernocchi, Gavin Morrow , Joel Gilardini, Esa J. Ruoho, Heikki Lindgren, Mario Lino Stancati, Erik Jarl, Roberto Quezada, Jarko M. Hedenius, Janne Liimatainen, Mombi Yuleman and Christian Schneider) provides sound descriptions of the dystopian world narrated by the English master J. G. Ballard in his novels and short stories, creating an imaginary soundtrack of those s/f masterpieces.

FreeForm thanks Raffaele Pezzella (Sonologyst) for providing us with a copy of this release.

credits

released June 3, 2022

REVIEWS

Avant Music News
avantmusicnews.com/2022/06/27/amn-reviews-the-dystopian-world-of-j-g-ballard-2022-zero-k/

Richard Dodgin (This Is Darkness)
The Dystopian World of J.G.Ballard is another great compilation album from the Zero K label, featuring music from an impressive range of musicians (including HLER, JARL, and Lars Bröndum to name just a few). The album “… provides sound descriptions of the dystopian world … in his novels and short stories, creating an imaginary soundtrack of those s/f masterpieces …” with tracks of experimental, post industrial, drone, dark ambient, and electronica all fitting together nicely to create a remarkable listening experience. The album does have a cohesive feel to it, and yet the moods of the tracks vary: some are dark and confrontational, others are meditative and lo-fi, others yet are noisy, a number are minimalist, and others are challenging and disturbing. Fantastic.

Edited by ZeroK
Mastered by Raffaele Pezzella (Sonologyst)
Cover artwork: collage by RhaD
Photos by Gavin Morrow
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