Praxinoscope - For The Tears Of Land, Prayers From Outer Space ( [Elliptical Noise - 2010]It’s a pleasure to be genuinely surprised. To that end, one of the best reactions I can have to an album is one of nonplussed delight. What words that do come are usually along these lines: “I don’t know what I was expecting, but … ” or “Now there’s something I haven’t heard before … ” To wit: this disc. As best as I can tell, it is the second half of a split offering between Italian improvisers My Cat Is An Alien and their own side project Praxinoscope, where each group took the same set of sounds—wind chimes, a human voice, harmonica, some reverberation and echo effects and a few other things—and built two parallel compositions out of them. The two tracks are rather alike in the way they build from one “cloud” of sonic conceits to another, although the second part ends with a bit more violence than the first. (Imagine being slurped up into a cosmic vacuum cleaner and getting stuck in the nozzle.)
The end result is divided between being meditative and assaultive, but not in a way that feels like it’s at odds with itself. Those soaring, wailing vocals bring to mind Keiji Haino’s troubadour-from-outer-space sound, and come to think of it anyone who’s savored his more out-there blasts of cosmic blues would probably pick up on this quite happily. From what I’ve heard of the first half, it has blasts of guitar similar to what he throws down as well. Not surprising since, MCIAA and Haino have shared space before (see the Cosmic Debris, Vol. 3 compilation).
Before this disc, I was on the fence about the Alien galaxy of work, but now I’m quite firmly in the YES MORE PLEASE camp. I suspect my next stop will be the colossal 3-disc Cosmological Eye Trilogy, but the rest of you can start here for a lot less of an investment of time—that is, if you can land a copy    Serdar Yegulalp
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