Maurizio Bianchi + Pharmakustik — Metaplasie

Naked Lunch Records presents Metaplasie, a full-length collaborative effort by Maurizio Bianchi & Pharmakustik. Released in 2014, this pro-pressed CD-R comes in a full-color digipak. Bianchi and Siegmar Fricke’s Pharmakustik have worked together a number of times, through mail collaborations I’d gather. So what do we have going here? The back cover has a statement mentioning to the “abnormal environment of electro-cells” and the “sounds for stratified squamous metaplastic emotions,” which truthfully sounds like academic gibberish and means absolutely nothing this intellectual lightweight. So I’ll let the sounds speak for themselves. 

Metaplasie features 3 long track clocking in at 20 + minutes a piece. What we get are 3 dense slabs of darkly atmospheric drone and shifting electronics. Despite being a declaratively electronic album, this thing sounds like it was forged from the earth’s depths, except for the those times where it sounds like you're drifting through blackest space. Take for example the track, “Mamma.” The piece evolves at a glacial pace, evoking the sounds of shifting tectonic plates and earth scorched by magma. How this pair manages to take what I’m guessing are modular synths and make them sound so elemental is beyond me. This is some real crust from the earth musicianship going here. There are flourishes of electronic pulsing, squelch, squeal, zaps, and whirs, but they never seem to detract in how organic these tracks feel. If “Mamma” is earth then “Myeloid” is wind and fire. The disc’s final track sounds like the densely reverbed sounds of air circulating through a long, hollow corridor. It’s ethereal and hauntingly ambient. Then there are sounds that curdle below the surface, a slowly churning fire that slowly takes on the characteristics of industrial machinery. There are some obvious electronics worming their way through the drone, where focused pulses and other sci-fi sounds teleport us from earth to a wormhole in the deepest corners of space.

A really focused effort by both participants. If you like your drone dark and dense, with just enough obvious synth work to keep things interesting, then you can do no wrong with Metaplasie. Music to get some serious thinking done with…. like musing on the meaning of “stratified squamous metaplastic emotions.”