Minimalist icon Charlemagne Palestine has constructed mind-rending drone odysseys from the sounds of wine glasses, gongs, pianos, harmoniums, organs, his own voice — pretty much a “you name an acoustic instrument capable of sustain, he’s droned on it” kind of thing. Regardless of the instrument he pushes to its breaking point in any given performance, he can bend our perception of time. He can put us to sleep, or he can generate tones too haunting to turn away from. He elicits a physical response. I mean: he can control our bodies.
What happens Palestine leans back in his throne of stuffed animals with a computer in his lap? How does this mind handle the process of digital collage construction? With infinite layering and juxtaposing tactics at his fingertips, he does what he always does. He intractably zones us out. Press play on the 20 minute sample of SSINGGGG SSCHLLLINGG SSHPPPINGG (available now from Idiosyncratics) and sink into a bottomless chasm of organ overtones lined with chirping field recordings, buried vocalizations, and bursts of sampled percussion. The composite of all of these stacked sound sources amounts to a mammoth and quivering mass of tone, flecked with innumerable details that zig-zig between consonance and claustrophobia-inducing atonality.
• Charlemagne Palestine: http://www.charlemagnepalestine.org/
• Idiosyncratics: http://www.idiosyncraticslabel.blogspot.com/
More about: Charlemagne Palestine
