KMXT FreeForm Radio: richard barbieri

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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
© 2022. All rights reserved

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ZERO K Italy

Soundscapes for dystopias,
retro futurism and sci-fi drifts.

ZeroK is part of © Unexplained Sounds, network... more

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Review from The Obelisk:
Having proffered tonal sweetness and instrumental heavy psych groove since their self-titled debut made its way to the ears of an eager European scene in 2006 via Elektrohasch, the German four-piece My Sleeping Karma make a jump to Napalm Records for the release of their fourth album, the CD/2LP Soma. If one that’s going to bring them to the attention of a wider audience, it’s also a move for which they’re ready. Their last album, Tri (review here), was released in 2010 and found the band focusing on various aspects of Hindu theology, using the names of gods as themes running throughout the mostly instrumental tracks. With the prior Satya (review here) in 2008, it was Buddhism at the thematic fore.
Musically, they’ve remained consistent despite working through these varied conceptual influences – you could hear Seppi’s guitar tone on the debut and on the latest and recognize the same smoothness in it then as now, though what he’s playing is more developed – and Soma takes for its basis the Hindu drink of the gods that shares its name. Each of the 55-minute full-length’s six central, mostly extended (six minutes and up) tracks is named for an “ingredient” in the soma, and each is also companioned by a transitional interlude, making the album as a whole an 11-track CD, beginning with “Pachyclada” and ending with “Psilocybe,” as each pair of songs between is separated by and interlude. This would be, at worst, a disruption of Soma’s progression, were it not for the fluidity of the material itself. If My Sleeping Karma wanted to base their fourth album around a drink, they did right in choosing something liquid, as there’s no better descriptive basis for the songs themselves – they flow as a liquid would, to be clearer about it. Rather than distract from that process, the interludes add to it, bolstering an already rich atmosphere and adding instrumental complexity and ambient vibing to the ebbs and flows within the more expansive, dynamic tracks. On any level you could want to evaluate it, Soma is a triumph in how it accomplishes the task it sets for itself – tonally, atmospherically, engagingly. It crafts memorable parts serving a greater whole and to call it manna doesn’t seem inappropriate (however disparate the cultural basis might be for doing so might be) given My Sleeping Karma’s otherworldly psychedelic range.
Most of the elements at work musically on Soma will be familiar to those who’ve experienced My Sleeping Karma’s sweetly-honed jamming before. Their apparent methodology remains consistent despite the varying themes – they jam – in a variety of moods and vibes, perhaps, but they jam nonetheless. Songs like “Pachyclada,” “Ephedra” and “Eleusine Coracana” are not without their structures, their peaks and valleys, but they have a direction underlying their largely open-feeling development. At an even nine minutes, opener “Pachyclada” is the longest piece on Soma (immediate points tallied to whatever scope might be kept) and sets the tone for what follows with strong hits from drummer Steffen punctuating the prevalent bassline of Matte as Seppi’s guitar gradually swells to prominence.
One thing My Sleeping Karma has always done well is craft a chorus out of the instrumentation, and Seppi is quick to establish that of “Pachyclada” in a flicker of a lead that returns as a sort of mini-theme within the song itself, cycling through several times in the first half before a heavier tangent emerges in the second, still keeping to the same kind of idea, but turning it into a build that reaches a satisfying apex before calming and riding out, Norman’s keys adding proggy swirls and a sort of howling tonality to complement the guitar. From its very beginning, the song is rich and encompassing – on headphones its pull is even greater – and the rainy transition it makes into the first of the album’s five interludes is no less smooth than anything on “Pachyclada” itself. The interludes are a point of interest both sonically and conceptually, as they manage to be vastly different among themselves while also tying the material before and after them together. The one between “Pachyclada” and “Ephedra” is Seppi’s guitar alone, echoing layers of simple sweetness, but to contrast, the later interlude between “Saumya” and “Somalatha” is key-led, almost trip-hop in its construction, so there’s more at work there than just moving from one track to the next. With drums at the fore between “Ephedra” and “Eleusine Coracana” and Matte’s bass accompanying birdsong between “Eleusine Coracana” and “Saumya,” it’s as though each member of My Sleeping Karma was given an interlude of their own, finally culminating in the breathing-topped, beating-heart contemplative minimalism of the interlude between “Somalatha” and closer “Psilocybe.”

Planets + Persona, the 2017 studio album from Richard Barbieri, is the most sonically expansive work to date from the former Japan and Porcupine Tree keyboard maestro.

The album combines vintage analogue synthesisers with acoustic instrumentation, and incorporates Jazz elements, pitching Barbieri's unique sound designs against improvisations from a personally hand-picked group of guest musicians that includes Percy Jones, Luca Calabrese and Lisen Rylander Love.

As on Stranger Inside, manipulated voices (mainly courtesy of Rylander Love's real time experiments) are present.

Recorded across Europe in studios in London, Italy and Sweden, Barbieri's third album is without doubt his most ambitious solo release to date.

Highlighting the album's central theme of duality, the artwork on the 16 page booklet features photographic scenes of dramatic Icelandic landscapes.

CD in digipak. Mastered by Simon Heyworth.

TRACKS

1. Solar Sea (7:30)
2. New Found Land (7:17)
3. Night Of The Hunter (10:44)
4. Interstellar Medium (5:38)
5. Unholy (8:58)
6. Shafts Of Light (6:39)
7. Solar Storm (6:22)

Credits

Richard Barbieri - Synthesisers, Fender Rhodes, Sampler, Electronic Percussion Programming, Sound design

with guest perfomers:

Lisen Rylander Love - Voices, Saxophone
Luca Calabrese - Trumpet
Kjell Severinsson - Drums
Klas Assarsson - Vibraphone
Christian Saggese - Acoustic Guitar
Grice Peters - Kora
Axel Crone - Bass
Percy Jones - Bass Guitar

KMXT FreeForm Radio

26 July 2022: Porcupine Tree; The Dystopian World of J.G. Ballard

Reception

^{Read more about Continuation/Closure here.}