With this ep on Not Not Fun, Pink Luminous Invocation follow up their self-titled debut on Foxglove from 2006. For a lot of musicians it would be ridiculous to have a live ep as second ever release. Things are different with ?Pink Fog?, however, as the Danish quartet?s experimental drones are mostly improvised to begin with, making a live recording the most natural option. The result is a stunning performance the narrative structure of which isn?t something to rave about but which is still shockingly effective in creating an atmosphere that combines the urgency of Nadja?s live performances, the vocal style of Grouper and the elegiac grandeur of Machinefabriek?s electronic drones.

There is no applause when the performance ends silently after some 27 minutes of hushed voices, a very long crescendo of siren-like guitar drone and a whirring kalimba. Obviously the audience in Copenhagen?s Literaturhaus was floored by PLI?s uncanny narrative, a fascinating movement that is unnervingly spontaneous without ever sounding arbitrary. This is M. Night Shyamalan?s ?The Village? in music. Three hauntingly layered voices wail from afar but lure the listener deeper and deeper into the penetrating texture of this ?Pink Fog?, which is at its thickest (and noisiest) when the consistently swelling drone is suddenly buried under the weirdly melodic pattern that sounds like an Indonesian rooster and is produced by what I take to be a zurna.

It has to be criticized that long crescendos leading into noisy climaxes followed by short decrescendos have been overdone in the field of beyond-twenty-minute-drone music recently and have therefore become a bit formulaic, but PLI?s performance is simply too good to get boring. The silk-screened disc and packaging are nice, too. What a shame this is limited to a mere 71 copies (my copy is #76 though). 7/10 -- Jan-Arne Sohns (31 July, 2007)