REVIEW: Pearson Sound – “Pearson Sound”

Messrs. Pseudo and Nym are agreed that, if this release is going to receive stars, they are going to be really big stars. Not the sort that are going supernova, mind, but more the sort that are slowly cooling into lumps of iron. And Monsieur Pseudo thinks that there must be someone out there in the wide, cold, dark expanse of space that will eventually find a use for, or even a beauty in, said lumps of iron. Monsieur Nym, however, is not so sure.

If you do like floating through the ether to atonal analogue sounds you might be justified in listening to “Glass Eye“ or “Gristle“. “Headless” sounds like what you imagine a dolphin seeing another dolphin having its head sliced off would sound like (distressing – think “Orca Reflections” meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). And “Six Congas” is actually a rather good track.

But the trouble with using droney siren sounds as one of your main themes is that they drone and this can be a bit annoying. About as annoying as a WW2 air-raid siren that can still be heard in an otherwise sleepy English coastal town 70 years after D-Day. The accompanying phone-ringing and vibration noises are, as they say, “Mere gravy”.

Having said this, the deep bass underpinning it all does have its moments and the blip analog percussion only just fails to be mesmeric. But if Pearson Sound is going PROPA minimal – Phillip Glass / Steve Reich style – there should be at least a little bit more variation. Otherwise it is never going to progress from the “Music-to-tap-your- foot-to-a-little-uncertainly-whilst-you-wait-for-the-first-set-to-start-and-skittlebomb-to-hit” category.  For Messrs. Pseudo and Nym, John Hopkins‘s “Immunity” album represented a watershed moment, a new kind of popular techno that probably wouldn’t work in a club, but bridged the gap between ambient and chunk-tech.  “Pearson Sound” has too much internal repetition and not enough technical virtuosity to be another groundbreaking album.  But perhaps it is trying to do for post-dubstep what “Immunity” did for straight up banging techno.  So by all means have a listen. Just make sure you use headphones.

Written by Messrs. Pseudo and Nym.