Month: December 2007

"Divide by Zero" (CD) |afro2040|

TOUCHING EXTREMES (IT) I shouldn’t say that, but in 2008 Zbigniew Karkowski will be 50. It makes me feel older by the minute, thinking that I’ve been listening to his experiments for more than 20 years now. Thank goodness the man from Krakow doesn’t hint to stopping its quest, just like the other characters who have been collaborating with him and respond to the names of John Duncan, Francisco Lopez, Hafler Trio, Merzbow. As you can see, we’re talking seriousness here, not some adolescent who received a laptop as a gift for graduating and decided that he wanted to be a part-time noise monger. Xopher Davidson (Antimatter) is another trustworthy guy, having mastered records by the likes of Iannis Xenakis and explored the role of sound in various contemporary artistic ambits. The couple is not new to this kind of release (check the Sirr catalogue for example), but the energy deriving by their masterful juxtapositions of buzzing hums and throbbing frequencies is truly impressive. "Divide by zero" channels its intensity over the course of 52 minutes, in which changes of scenario – or of a single shade of whirr – are rarefied enough to get us lost in the kingdom of granulated brains for long blissful moments. As it happens in Phill Niblock’s music, one’s content of sitting there and sense the world sliding to complete nonsense, conscious that everything springs from that mother vibration from which the elected ones will be reabsorbed. It won’t take long, you see. The others keep wondering what’s going to happen and why they feel oh-so-bad, uselessly joining a group of brainless zombies, seeking help from wasted doctors who behave exactly the same, everybody helplessly trying to get noticed by those who have no time for them. Divide by zero, return to zero. Yet there’s still talk about "self-development", despite most people not even being able to articulate their own language. Massimo Ricci

www.myspace.com/zbigniewkarkowski