Top Bar
Musique Machine Logo Home ButtonReviews ButtonArticles ButtonBand Specials ButtonAbout Us Button
SearchGo Down
Search for  
With search mode in section(s)
And sort the results by
show articles written by  
 Review archive:  # a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Maurizio Bianchi + Pharmakustik - Metaplasie [Naked Lunch Records - 2014]

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.”

Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5

Hal Harmon
Latest Reviews

Maurizio Bianchi + Pharmakustik -...
Naked Lunch Records presents Metaplasie, a full-length collaborative effort by Maurizio Bianchi & Pharmakustik. Released in 2014, this pro-pressed CD-R c...
030226   Leslie Butler - Ja-Gan
020226   Libido - Libido( Blu Ray)
020226   Night of the Juggler - Night ...
020226   Periode - Grapes of Nothingness
020226   Invictus - Nocturnal Visions
300126   Eldritch Priest - Dead-Wall R...
300126   Jürg Frey - Je Laisse à La ...
290126   The Assassination Bureau - T...
280126   Spent Stiletto/ No Fun Harsh ...
280126   Evil Damn - Eons of Horror
Latest Articles

Crude ‘n’ Hope-corroding Wall...
Back in 2024, I got my first taste of Absurd Reality, and I was so impressed by how crude and nasty its take on walled noise was. Behind the project is South...
290126   Crude ‘n’ Hope-corroding ...
231225   Creepy Images Books - Killer Art
221225   Best Of 2025 - Music, Sound &...
041225   The Spectral Sounds of The Pr...
281025   Michael Hurst Interview - Unb...
071025   Xiphos - The Rise And Fall Of...
030925   Third Window Films - A Label ...
130825   HNW fest- Barcelona- 12th Apr...
250725   Raté interview - Walled-in F...
180625   Matthew Holmes - Of razor-sha...
Go Up
(c) Musique Machine 2001 -2025. Twenty four years of true independence!! Mail Us at questions=at=musiquemachine=dot=comBottom