Experimental Artists Blog

Plastic Loves Global Warming:

This release from 2006 features 40 minutes of grinding tuneage.

Employing harsh tonalities and growling synthetics, Ziino conjures an angry soundscape that communicates a strong environmental message through the electronics unbridled wrath.

Savagely squealing diodes conspire with guttural e-perc, peppered with teeth-gritting harmonics generated in some dark industrial basement. Searing sounds assault the audience, lashing the ear canals into wide-eyed attention with their relentless fervor. Periodically, nimble-fingered riffs launch forth to surface with a vengeance amid the furious tumult, although generally the embellishments constitute an increase of the dense noise. Hissing rhythms pound away throughout, providing tempos for the agitated commotion.

The compositions display subtle structure buried in the turbulence. Sublimated pop overdosed on angst and drenched in industrial furor until the result rings with penultimate intensity designed to alienate the man-on-the-street.

Definitely the type of music that would win a street war with your neighbor’s obnoxious boombox.

Music from the Valley of the Flowers:

This disc from experimental artist Robert Ziino is his second, following TWILIGHT CLONES, and one of the interesting things about it is that each of the twelve tracks is exactly three minutes long. Why this is so is less clear, but it certainly keeps things from getting out of hand…. The tracks themselves are keyboard-heavy experiments in repetition, looped rhythms, and unusual sounds with no vocals. If you’ve ever heard the solo sides by Nick Mason, Rick Wright, and David Gilmour on the Pink Floyd album UMMAGUMMA, then all you have to do is imagine those peculiar sounds (minus the fluid guitar) in a more modern context and processed through keyboards to get an idea of what this disc sounds like. The tracks have less to do with standard ideas about music than with discovering new and different sounds, then looping and juxtaposing them. Think of soundtrack music for science-fiction films, or late-night gadget sessions at the local recording studio. This is robot lounge music, cocktail jazz for machines at rest on the weekend. Strange and oddly compelling stuff, even if it doesn’t have a beat you can dance too, as the Dorian Gray of pop music might say.

Twilight Clones:

Ziino’s Twilight Clones is something like the aural equivalent of a high-resolution, three-dimensional, high-tech video game. It’s revving with cybernetic beats, bleeps and blonks (thanks Butterfly Messiah for that descriptive word), while rhythms from more organic drumming hold it all together and keep you focused as you follow the machines’ dialogue. “Pod Door” picks up a tribal groove alongside curious electronica and a thick, chewy buzz; “Revolution” is more chaotic and computerized, building up its speed before meteoring straight down and disappearing. A jet crossed the sky while listening - or was that in the song? The final track rumbles to life and lays out an expanse of harsher noises, like a UFO impacting and unleashing a geologic disturbance. The drumming made this disc for me, but even without it these are tricky, playful, listenable experiments with electronic sounds.