Karkowski, Zbigniew – Electrostatics

Zbigniew Karkowski is perhaps best known for his collaborations with Merzbow, or for his involvement in an excellent live act called the Sensor Band. However, with his solo releases Karkowski has been slowly building an excellent discography, which is even more interesting.

On this release Karkowski delivers (live) improvisation material. The material was created using static of a shortwave radio, an antenna and a transformer, and probably a computer. The music starts out by an obscure sample, which is followed by pure static (like holding an amplifier plug) This static slowly builds up to a sort of ambient-noise.

This work strongly reminds me of the latest releases by Daniel Menche (although less intense), or of the older (and more noisy) works of Francisco Lopez. Somehow I also think it sounds like a lot of the old Pure-label releases.

Although the idea and approach of this type of noise is far from original, Karkowski somehow always manages to create something interesting and never becomes dull. This, I guess, is the trademark of a real artist.

artist: Karkowski, Zbigniew
label: Post Concrete
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