Preslav Literary School / Glue Pour — Telepathy Shots/Sonuna

Telepathy Shots / Sonuna" is a 40 minute split LP, where each artist contributes a 20 minute track.  It's the first LP release by Razzle Dazzle, a label that has previously dealt mostly in CDrs.  I'd never heard of either Glue Pour nor Preslav Literary School, but from the look of the package I assumed it was noise.  This is only partly the case: while there are elements of noise, this is more of an ambient release.

Glue Pour's "Telepathy Shots" occupies itself at first with undulations of amplified noise floors and thin digital feedback buzz.  Initially quite sterile and inhuman, it evolves into a brooding quasi-melodic meditation with a grim ritual dark ambient flavor.  Two melancholic chords wrought from digital noise alternate with greater and greater clarity in the second 10 minutes.  The piece descends progressively deeper into trance state.  There are some wonderful lo-fi distortions and resonances in this track.

"Sonuna" (by Preslav Literary School) is drastically quieter, nothing but vague, ethereal wisps.  It has the openness of upper atmosphere - more emptiness than substance.  Faint voices, lightly strummed guitars and bubbling synthetic melodies emerge from a soft carpet of trebley wind and air sounds.  It's like trespassing in the realms of the gods, an intriguing delirious / inebriated feeling.

I loved the mysterious "Sonuna" immediately, and now "Telepathy Shots", a multifaceted and intelligent piece, has grown on me as well.  The two tracks are very different but suggest a similar otherworldly, surreal atmosphere that fans of Coil and Nurse With Wound should enjoy.  There's virtually nothing I dislike about this release and I highly recommend it to fans of longform soundscapes.