Has anyone else noticed things being a little more stressful than usual lately? I can’t put my finger on the specifics, but I just get this general sense that every little thing that happens to me is contributing to a larger inner tension that’s pulsing in some connected superbrain under the soil, faster and faster until finally it awakes from its centuries-long slumber and feasts on us, all of us, with ravenous glee. Like until somewhat recently, my regular morning ritual was to hit the snooze button a couple times, put the teapot on for my girlfriend, get in the shower, and get a sack lunch ready before I stepped out the door. Now I turn the alarm off entirely, sleep until noon, check the news on my phone, write furious comments under the articles, walk past my local coffee shop to find a Starbucks, use my phone while in line to send an angry email to the city planners for not installing a Starbucks closer to me, stumble over words and drop my money in front of the barista, curse out the homeless man on my way out, read about a celebrity death on Facebook walking home, take out my phone a second time to see that my mother “poked” me, start sprinting down the sidewalk without realizing it, and finally get back into bed in a thick sweat.
For people like us, there are a couple albums being released this upcoming Tuesday through Aguirre Records that might help slow our heart rates down a little: Pulse Emitter’s Aeons and Panabrite’s Sub-Aquatic Meditation. Both albums use a similar therapeutic technique as that used in Elvis Presley’s body of work, but where Presley healed teenagers’ hearts by gyrating their hips until they felt strong enough to face the world, Pulse Emitter and Panabrite have moved the point of gyration to the frontal lobe and slowed the oscillations down until those teenagers can feel every crinkle of their brain receiving a massage at the hands of experts.
Firstly: Pulse Emitter released one of my favorite LPs of last year, Spiritual Vistas, and if that album was a gradual zooming-out from “Tree Lined Asphalt” to a gorgeous “Nebula,” then follow-up Aeons both reaches further out and arcs back down to Earth, beaming achingly human melodies into cavernous space. Secondly: Panabrite lay it out for you right there in the title, but meditation can come in many forms, so don’t think this album is going to serve purely as a laxative for your sleep valve. Sub-Aquatic Meditation recalls the imagined chirping early electronic library music of Ursula Bogner over 12 short pieces, recasting Bogner as an ingenious but intensely private crustacean experimenting with all the abandoned synths that ended up on the ocean floor over the years. Finally, check the Chocolate Grinder for a new Panabrite video: “Octopus in Your Dreams.” Thanks, and continue to pray for our species.
Aeons tracklisting:
01. Hermits
02. Spaceship
03. Pangaea
04. Immortality
Sub-Aquatic Meditations tracklisting:
01. Slipping into the Deep
02. Atoll
03. Whirlpool
04. Fissures
05. Neptune Visions in the Cryst
06. These Are Barnacles
07. Octopus in Your Dreams
08. Sunlight Dive
09. Memory Tank
10. Acquario
11. Siphonophore
12. Lullaby of the Abyss
• Pulse Emitter: http://synthnoise.com
• Panabrite: http://panabritesounds.blogspot.com
• Aguirre: http://www.aguirrecords.com
