PETRIDISCH “Malaise Event” (Houdini Mansions)

Malaise Event is baroque mood for people who like massive synthesizer excursions. Yes, the tones are thick as syrup; yes, you feel like you’re under a few hundred feet of ocean pressure when you’re listening to them; yes, the sea is filled with syrup. There’s a reason that massive anglerfish is menacing those fast-food-starved humans on the cover: it’s showing us the distillation of every moment of our waking lives.

That doesn’t mean that Petridisch has to like it, or even, by god isn’t fighting against it constantly. The depths of Malaise Event are filled with the proper sound design, reverberating through deep-sea caverns and caves, shimmering the reflective surfaces with whatever light is at hand. It’s like a glimmer of hope when all seems lost, possibly in the maw of some surprise beast.

This ain’t no soundtrack to no BBC documentary. This is tension incarnate.

And it’s as exciting as it gets. It even remains exciting when Even Wolves remix the A-side for “Abyss Event” on the flip, which may or may not have anything to do with those James Cameron liquid aliens from the movie. If it does, let’s all stay as far away from Michael Biehn as we can, OK?

Available as a Minidisc too, but this is a cassette blog, so shove it, alternate formats!

https://petridisch.bandcamp.com/

https://houdinimansions.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

PETRIDISCH “A Fixed Point” (I Heart Noise)

Boston “darkwave” artist Petridisch has the honor of releasing the first physical artifact on I Heart Noise, till now a blog and digital mixtape label intent on unearthing “peculiar sounds” and unleashing them upon the unwitting populace – sounds a little bit like yours truly, if you ask me. (Except for the label part – who’s got time for that?) Now there are physical things to consume in real space! A CD (ugh; edition of 10) and a tape (yay! Edition of 50), but you’ve already bought the tape (because it’s sold out). Petridisch, true to his vast discographical root structure (see link below), toils in an electronic landscape that’s part techno, part industrial, all mood, and these four songs are a perfect entry point into his psyche-delia. “The Unknown Rabbit” and “Operation Interlude” are my favorite tracks here, mainly because there’s an added dash of shoegaze that was always oh-so-present in my favorite netlabel releases from the early to mid-2000s (Laridae, represent!). Thick synths swell over electro clicks, overwhelming speakers in the best possible way. “In the Red” and “In the Black” feature vocal samples, and while they totally work within the genre and within these two tracks, I’ll take non-vocal tracks any day of the week. Still, “Red” and “Black” have that gothic element, the female voices drifting over the bleeps and blops like KMFDM background singers over a half-speed Orbital track. OK, OK, the space is a magic space. There, I said it, you happy? A FIXED POINT, perhaps THE reference point for all Petridisch music, is the perfecto place to start your collection of PD tunes and also IHN releases. Get in on the ground floor here, folks, and tell everybody I sent ya when these things fetch a grand on Discogs.

Each song comes with a video too!

Petridisch I Heart Noise

--Ryan Masteller