This summer I was reading Multitude: War & Democracy In the Age of Empire [Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Penguin Press, 2004], and came across an intriguing descriptor that I copied for my records, thinking I might find a home for it in a future music review. In a passage describing the political concept of swarms, almost always used as a pejorative [think sheeple], the authors note, admiringly, that Rimbaud flipped the word, making of it an encomium. In his 1871 hymns to the Paris Commune, the poet sang of the communards' anarchistic spirit as the "music of the swarm". Critic Kristin Ross, writing of Rimbaud's Illuminations, observes a sound-quality in his mad prosody she calls "insect verse", and elaborates, "...[Rimbaud's poetry] is a force field of unassigned frequencies, ominous or lulling, depending on the context."

In the maelstrom and transitory lulls of Joe Panzner's Clearing, Polluted, a three-part work he developed over the past two years in fits and starts [necessitated in no small part by dint of becoming a father, while persevering through a doctoral dissertation in musicology], I hear a force field of unassigned, sometimes ineffable frequencies. They are indeed alternately ominous [the extreme low-end frequencies that roil and gather force midway through the first section, Young Theorist], and lulling [the oscillating, consonant drone that concludes this section]. There is insect verse as well, sections of furtive clicks and rattling reminiscent of the scurrying and scattering guitar abuse heard on Kevin Drumm's first few releases. The ferocious second section, Hindsight Is 50/50, might in fact be reductively referred to as the sonic love-child of Drumm's Sheer Hellish Miasma, and Julien Ottavi's Nervure Magnetique, raised in the nursery of Francisco Lopez.

These little passes at clever referents help convey a sound area, but also compel me to say I do not hear Clearing. Polluted as being derivative; on the contrary, I consider this surprising release, alongside the current work of folks like Jason Lescalleet, Mike Shiflet and some of Daniel Menche's stuff, to be nearly redemptive in an area of music as stagnant and surfeit with shoddy releases as can be found in any genre. Panzner brings an acute attention to detail and precision to what his playing partner Mike Shiflet once dubbed "excess audio" spatial detail, clearly obsessive levels of sonic-sifting for the most organic [read, not contrived or precious] elements of tension and release, and an improbably mature grasp on the possibilities of the entire frequency range. If your ears are high or low-end aversive, wait a while; the scope of Clearing, Polluted yields rich, if occasionally pummeling, sounds from across the dynamic range. While it is not as crucial that you listen with your fingers affixed to the volume control as, say, listening to Julien Ottavi or Giya Kancheli [the latter's work rivals any noisenik's for jolting the lulled listener out of their seat with his self-described "battle scene" passages], have a care if playing Clearing, Polluted around sonic tourists, or dogs with a high startle response.

I called this a surprising release, as I think even a reasonably seasoned listener to this area of music would not expect a work of such impressive structure and range to come in the trickle of releases Panzner has issued over the past five years - a couple of CDRs in 2006, a few stellar documents from Scenic Railroads, Panzner's duo project with Shiflet, between 2004-2006. Panzner's mastering of Shiflet's essential, self-released 2010 work, Llanos, was a clue for attentive listeners that he has mad skills in that area of production. Nonetheless, I wasn't prepared for this jolt of beauty. Clearing, Polluted enters the field of similar releases with assured blasts of gravitas and fury, and never treads water nor falters. Much of its 46 minutes is comprised of swarms of meticulously assembled noise that reminds me, oh yeah, Panzner-the-composer makes of swarms of noise what other composers construct with blocks, or sheets, or notated measures of sound.

I have listened through Clearing, Polluted many times; easily annoyed, and quick to bail from the extreme areas of the noise continuum, I am happy to report we have one more musician who brings both viscera and intelligence to the squall, both density and fine detail, and hits the pavement with a clutch of ideas in his fists. Massive, but also deft and brisk, and at times grippingly melancholic, Clearing, Polluted is the happy surprise for this listener of 2011. I am hard-pressed to imagine anything being released in the balance of this year that would dislodge it from my few, favorite releases of 2011. I am pleased to see it come out on Richard Kamerman's Copy For Your Records imprint. May it not get lost in the ridiculous deluge of releases this year, as is, of course, the fate of any music with guts and ideas issuing from similarly small imprints.


The swarm metaphor was swiped from Kristin Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune, Verso, 2008

- Jesse Goin, Crow With No Mouth

One of the more pleasing examples of synchronicity the final quarter of 2011 served up was breakthrough, above-ground solo albums from not one but both members of Scenic Railroads. First Mike Shiflet's Sufferers on Type, and now Joe Panzner's Clearing, Polluted. The album's centerpiece is "Hindsight is 50/50", a fierce Noise blast worthy of peak-era Kevin Drumm, which fires out jagged fragments in expressionist splurges, gradually coalescing into a scything power-drone. It's bookended by two intelligently tense pieces. "Less Than A Feeling" slips past elegantly, mutating in form from delicate tones to crackling frequencies. The 17 minute opening track "Young Theorist" is the standout, an exercise in textural stress taking in some surprising structural detours

- Nick Cain, Wire Magazine, Issue #335, January 2012

The listener immediately warms to "Clearing, Polluted", a record with strong digital reworkings and uncompromising passages - all magnificently set under an elegant hybrid "power-drone" stylization. The author makes profitable use of electronic glitch manipulations, bouncing cuts with sharp, low tones - sounds that also evolve in a more refined and quiet way. The constructions feel accurate and delicate but remain rich with convulsive winces and poppings. We experience feedbacks, digressions and alternations; always executed with great strain, passing from inertial states to mystic melodies and contrasted with moments of intense agitation. But this album retains a directness and an appeal that allows it to get close to some kind of improvisational music, with mobiels tratifications and and "organic" coherence that remains comfortable.

- Aurelio Cianciotta, Neural Magazine, Issue #42, Summer 2012

Not exactly a prolific creator (which is always a good sign), Panzner hasn't done much sonically since 2006, although he used to be one half of Scenic Railroads with Mike Shiflet. This new release of his is severe and difficult in the extreme; not especially loud in volume, but the crunched-up digital textures are distinctly unpleasant, and feel like they're being extracted from the innards of a computer by means of a highly painful procedure. If your laptop had varicose veins, this is what it would sound like as a surgeon slowly pulled them out with enormous tweezers. No less unsettling are the abrupt and sudden shifts in tone and timbre, which blow up in your face like so much hot gelignite just as you're bending into the speaker because you think nothing much is happening. All the more alarming because Panzner's plans are quite opaque and nothing is announced or mapped out in his sealed-off compositional scheme. Most of the murderous train-wreck catastrophe music is on the middle track, sandwiched either side with long stretches of ambiguous gloomy poison gas and venomous barbed thorns; a bit like No Man's Land in Passchendaele, in fine. A tough listen, but I like the composer's refusal to explain very much and the stern-faced impassive manner in which he presents his work.

- Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector

I was just thinking the other day that the art of constructing a CDs of purely 'abstract' sounds, not field recordings, or obviously instrumental samples is a bit of a dying art. I of course am not talking about improvisation here, but the taking of more unidentifiable material and, using a computer, sculpting it into a coherent work. These days when I listen to something of this kind I usually seem to hear something identifiable in there somewhere, be it the ubiquitous hydrophone recording, or traffic, or birdsong, or maybe something more unusual that isn't on the usual checklist but can be identified. The likes of John Wall, meshing together raw, nameless material into something less amorphous are probably still all out there, but it does seem their paths cross less frequently with mine than they used to.

So it has been really pleasing to listen to Joe Panzner's Clearing, Polluted disc over the past couple of weeks. Pieced together on a computer over three years from (I am guessing) bits and pieces of improvised electroacoustic matter into something of a three-part epic composition, there is something refreshingly simple, yet darkly emotive about this new release. Panzner first came to my attention as one half of the Scenic Railroads duo a good few years ago now. Releasing a handful of strong CDs that crossed between modern electroacoustic improv and the noise end of the spectrum, the American duo stopped working so regularly together when geographic and familial matters took precedence. Assuming is a dangerous thing to do, but I will guess that as he became a father for the first time, Panzner retreated to working slowly on less immediate, more considered music when time allowed. In this case in particular, I would say that this was a good move, necessary or not, as Clearing, Polluted sounds like a thoroughly considered, fully realised work by a much matured musician.

This said, the album does not sound like a studio construction. The danger of working in this manner will always be that the immediacy and ineffable energy of improvised music will be lost to the slippery slope of precision and dilemma. Nothing like that has taken place here, and the three tracks each seethe with a raw vitality, be it the quiet, restrained fidgeting and tremor of the first and last pieces, or the blistering mass of confused noise that forms much of the centrepiece. Panzner manages to get a fair amount of passion and power into the work. This doesn't sound like a series of layered improvisations or a cut and paste collage, but a thoroughly organic, living entity. To create something that sounds so alive and vibrant over such a long duration of time is quite an achievement.

The opening Young Theorist shudders into life like an old engine begin started for the first time in years, brittle bits of rough electronics spark intermittently into life before settling into a faintly digital shimmer for a while before the first of several eruptions of electronic magma fuse the process and force the music to start again. Throughout the album there is a beautiful balance between the bassy hums, drifting swathes and clicking chatter that sit in the background and the more violent activities that come and go above them. The very slowly intensifying layers that form the base of the music gradually seem to increase the heat before the sudden inflammations rip the music open. If becoming a parent is supposed to mellow a musician then Panzner seems immune to such remodelling. While Clearing, Polluted feels a thoroughly evolved, mature work, it also bares a lot of anger and emotion. The frustrations of youth haven't gone away, they have just been neatly arranged.

As Young Theorist resolves itself to a soothing, almost ambient wash for its closing minutes, the following Hindsight is 50/50 stumbles its way through a darkened room full of shards of broken circuits until the light is suddenly switched on and we are assaulted by a stream of occasionally thunderous, digitally twisted noise that leaps around rapidly from one set of dynamics to another, sounds carefully selected, precisely placed maybe, and yet giving the impression of catastrophic collapse, elements crashing around our ears however we turn our heads. As a listener I find myself thrown headfirst into this music, lost in its intense mazes, a stream of metaphors and poetic extremes falling into my head to describe its claustrophobic enclosures and the hive of activity flying about inside before the track flatlines into a grey, industrially textured impasse that eventually gives way to the softest of quiet recoveries. The closing Less Than a Feeling continues at low volume, and much to its credit, refuses to go the same way as the preceding piece. Instead the track folds together incredibly delicate, barely audible tones, shimmering pinpricks of digital detritus, looming clouds and smaller, seemingly stray particles into a work that feels pregnant with anticipation, and keeps you wondering where it will go until you realise it has already taken you to some quite lovely places. Brian used the word grace to describe the impact of this closing track, and I struggle to come up with anything better- after the histrionics of the album's central track the closing piece has a dignity about it, a calm repose littered with fascinating small happenings that almost makes its own statement about the rest of the album. There is one sudden little digital abrasion in this final piece, and its intrusion signals the end of the album, a brief raw malfunctioning in the calm that brings everything to a sudden, somehow fitting halt.

I don't usually get on well with really noisy music, but I have always made it clear that what I don't like is the sense of reckless abandon that is a feature of so much of the genre, the feeling that the details no longer matter. Clearing, Polluted, despite its forays into quite harsh, loud sections never feels like it loses control and always feels considered and purposefully arranged. When extremes of volume are used in this way they are highly affecting and bring immediate comparisons to human emotions, anger, tension and fear. Listening to this album is as troublingly difficult as it is joyfully pleasurable. I hope it takes Joe Panzner another three years to make his next album.

Available from the increasingly strong Copy for your Records.

- Richard Pinnell, The Watchful Ear