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Pierre Bastien & Dr. Truna — Electric Totems
(Bandcamp aMarxe no#, 2024, CD / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2024-12-06

Electric Totems Cover art

The last time I wrote about a Pierre Bastien recording, it was Eggs Air Sister Steel way back in the mid-90s, and I’m not in a good position to compare any of his three dozen or so albums to one another, especially since the only other one that I’ve even heard is Mécanologie Portative, a collaboration with Klimperei. One thing is certain, with both of the aforementioned albums as well as Electric Totems under review here, Bastien’s creations are wildly experimental and deeply rooted in the unexpected, and while Eggs Air Sister Steel was mostly an acoustic endeavor, the album at hand employs plenty of electronics, loops, and a veritable grab bag of strange sounds that at times seem well beyond easy identification. The album, recorded with Dr. Truna, a mysterious player with no other credits to date, is bookended by two sidelong pieces, “Totems 1” and “Totems 2,” each roughly eighteen minutes in length, churning cauldrons of strange sounds, electronic loops, and fluttering percussives that bear no resemblance to any kind of conventional music — no real cadence, no real melody (sometimes whatever of that there is, it’s mired in destructive distortion), just ongoing complete random blasts of sonic insanity, bits of howling, screaming, and other strange vocalizing, and unusual electronic play — basically two lengthy sound collages of anything-goes cacophony and din. That said, these pieces are definitely interesting, though without any conventional musical structures to hold them together; one can hear occasional blasts from various woodwinds, maybe sax and clarinet, though distorted beyond recognition, as well as cello. In between these two lengthy bookends are four shorter tracks titled “Cadaver Exquisito (1/2/3/4),” equally strange although occasionally with more recognizable instrumentation — the trumpet on part 1 is very clearly such, and although quite random, the percussion and electronics make a bit more sense. On the whole, it’s clearly all improvisation, and probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’re a fearless listener, brave enough to jump into this ever-percolating cauldron, you’re bound to find something interesting here.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Pierre Bastien

More info
http://amarxe.bandcamp.com/album/electric-totems

 

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