It begins with a discreet wash of ambient noise that quickly morphs into loose strings of distorted frequencies and electronic rattle. A few minutes onwards, a skeletal rhythm track finally emerges from all this. It is barely maintained through a very controlled use of echos and delays. After a while, this somewhat repetive beat finally dissolves, making ample room for various shreds of sounds to move around and grow.

This is a process that will be found throughout the album. Electronically-manipulated sounds come and go as they please ? their sources all the more unidentifiable as their shapes are constantly mutating. The acoustic space is real and imaginary ? recorded and manipulated in real time in a live context/ fused in our minds as we listen on?

There are two characteristics that stand out here. First, a tendency to delineate actual sonic constructs whose fragile architectures owe as much to a certain idea of minimal techno (a la Pansonic) as to the early years of industrial music. In this respect, track #3 ?Distance Player? is particularly impressive: as a saturated electronic bass line increases the tension, multiple layers of shape-shifting sonic entities are added and subtracted while other conflicting noise exchanges are being pursued all around.

This organic feel remains intriguing throughout. As a matter of fact, a few sources used on this recording have been mentioned on the label website, but they won?t tell you much anything, except maybe from the fact that what we are dealing with something that is definitely hard to categorize. These are: ?radiators?, ?broken refrigerators? or what is being referred to as ?dilapidated architecture? and even ?fishing in the dead sea?!

No doubt, a highly disparate assemblage which is able to display some astonishing, yet understated results. On the epic fourth track ?Curretage?, free-flowing electronics respond to chopped loops of statics, while the constant presence of some highly stretched lower-frequency moans maintains a particularly tense and intriguing atmosphere all the way.

The second aspect that can be distinguished here is directly related to what has just been written above. This music is so rich and detailed that it is able to display a singular dronesome quality, one that is slightly overactive, always on the verge of becoming overwhelming, but which remains quietly unsettling and utterly fascinating. It?s as if streaks of dark, shattered clouds were playing hide and seek with a few isolated rays of sunlight above some bleak, yet constantly-mutating internal landscape.

What I love about this music is that you cannot really describe it ? however, it can affect you in the most direct way once you begin to listen to it. At times, I?m reminded of the impact the music of some Jyrk recording artists has on me ? artists like God, Bonus or even the Yellow Swans who are known to explore simultaneously both ends of the noise/silence spectrum.

However the music of Southern Man and Pykrete has a unique kind of vintage electro-acoustic, almost industrial touch that seems to come out of nowhere; as if the cdr had managed to capture some hitherto forgotten pulses that had been beating against the surfaces of the earth for so long.

The label website will reveal that Southern Man is actually a North Carolina/ Berlin duo, while Pykrete is a fellow Carolina resident. I don?t know anything else about these guys and about this recording in general, except from the fact that it is was recorded live. Simply put, this is excellent stuff. I highly recommend you check it out as well as all the other releases that can be found on this great label from Brooklyn. 7/10 -- Francois Hubert (18 September, 2006)