pinkcourtesyphone — All Intensive Purposes
Veteran digital soundscape artist Richard Chartier returns with a new offering from his most sensitive and emotive ambient alias, pinkcourtesyphone. Far from the cold pure tones and minimalism of his early days, this new album All Intensive Purposes, like others from the alias, sees Chartier creating a billowing reverberant sound closer to traditional space ambient.
The 1st piece is "That Intangible Object of Contempt - the Tenderness of...", continuing a tradition of expressive yearning titles from this project. Moving away from the whispered voice loops and other repetitious material found on the early 'PCP' recordings, the whooshing current here has no tempo at all, undulating like a cloud of underwater bubbles, or diffusing in all directions like steam. Faint animal-like cries appear in the distance near the end of the piece, and a brief sample of voice that sounds by its quality to be from a vintage film.
The second track is "Drained By the Very Nearness", and captures a dream-like tension and irrational fear, a realm of child-like worries and imaginings. In general, this album highlights a quality of nervousness and fear compared to the hauntingly regretful Foley Fully Folio from 2012, and bears less clear emotional content. Its foreboding horn calls paint a thick, blackly luminous space neatly comparable to classic works of dark ambient like Lustmord's Heresy, and is likely Chartier's most 'occult' feeling piece that I've heard, the most esoteric and nocturnal.
A cold, unforgiving howl is the central sound of this album, a rushing wind careening through a vast network of unseen passageways. As tracks progress, it feels as if we are taken furthur away from any familiarity or exit, lost in an intimidating opaque massiveness. Similar to the experience of visiting a cave in real life, there is a strangely comforting quality to the inert coldness and unconsciousness of the environment.
Where previous pinkcourtesyphone albums were defined by dark string samples, moody emotionality and romantic themes, with "All Intensive Purposes" Chartier charged fearlessly into a fully abstract environmental ambient in which the personal and emotive qualities are hidden furthur under the surface. Increasingly in the album's latter half, Chartier breaks his stone-like blank affect, and there are melodic moments, murmuring under insulating blankets of filter. Pieces like "Comfortable Predictability" and "Crushing Softness" are angelic and delicate, featuring the lingering wisps of choirs and pianos, glimmering in patient domestic warmth.
Overall this is a pleasant and rewarding listen for the ambient fan, with intelligently expressive chordal cloud movements that should satisfy fans of Steve Roach or Lustmord. Chartier reveals still more of a new intuitive, emotion-driven approach that greatly contrasts his beginnings with its analogue lushness and ear-massaging timbre. Perhaps of his most straightforward works, it is also among his best, for the charisma and craft of its construction. To pick up a copy of the CD direct drop in here