Abnegation, putrefaction, exploding implosions and imploding explosions — the first of the two extended pieces captured on this disc rips through the gates like one dissatisfied motherfucker. "Ergosphere Part 1"'s opening strains truly qualify as ear-splitting; even when I listen to them on my portable CD player's lowest volume setting, I can feel the skin of my eardrum being baked to a crisp by Kazuyuki Kishino's red-level white noise.
For such a rough and ready mess of laptop landmines in fields of oscillating dronescape hell, Ergosphere makes some surprising concessions after its merciless initiation ritual. Both compositions are neatly divided into two series of shorter tracks. Not only does this move convert these daunting sound installations into more ergonomic spaces, but it also gives us a pretty neat chart of a rather unwieldy album's progression. Just as practically every tone gets truncated, pressure-cooked, or bombarded until it's forced to evolve or die, each longer piece constantly turns on itself, achieving an episodic feel through Laswellian inversions and decapitations.
"Ergosphere Part 1" has its moments of jet engine glory, but it ultimately feels like a game in which Kishino tries to top his previous cloudburst with an even bloodier one. It's noise as exercise, and at 33 minutes long, the piece is likely to cause even the heartiest of listeners to drop dead from exhaustion if they grapple with it in its entirety. We've got the track divisions to save us from heat stroke, although the folks who were present at the Moscow Palace of Youth on the October 2005 night when the composition was recorded weren't so lucky.
Part Two's final salvo rivals any of Part One's bludgeonings, but it's a much more congenial piece on the whole. Kishino constructs an engaging post-industrial sound-bed that lends the piece stability, and each successive embellishment feels like it's leading up to a pale horse apocalypse. A twist ending would've complicated this predictable noise narrative, but when every scene sustains a sense of horror so well, perhaps we're better off enjoying rather than questioning.
1. Ergosphere Part 1
2. Ergosphere Part 2
3. Ergosphere Part 3
4. Ergosphere Part 4
5. Ergosphere Part 5
6. Ergosphere Part 6
7. Ergosphere Part 7
8. Ergosphere Part 8
9. Ergosphere Part 9
10. Ergosphere Part 10
11. Ergosphere Part 11
12. Ergosphere Part 12
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