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The two compositions that make up this album ("Everlasting Babylon of Your Mind" and "Discerning Eye of Mystics") are extracted from a vast body of work created during the Spring and Summer months of 2006. According to Pantelopoulos, the objective of this recording session was to see if he could "thrill himself" without the use of any melodic elements, at a time when he was seeking non-emotional or gnostic stimulation; sound itself was to be the sole, fundamental component. Revisited in 2009, the tracks were mixed and processed further, resulting in Nokalypse's most lavish electroacoustic work to date: toxic, metallic, alienated sound, far away from academic theories or political beliefs... (Allon Kaye, Entr'acte)
release information
release date : June 26, 2009
label : Absurd (noise-below.org) / Entr'acte (entracte.co.uk)
catalog number : A78 / E73
format, quantity : 12" Vinyl LP, 250 copies
contents
side A Everlasting Babylon of your Mind [19:18]
side B Discerning Eye of Mystics [19:05]
total duration
38:23
composed
April - July 2006, February - March 2009
mastering
April 2009
graphic
Allon Kaye, April 2009
available
12 EUR (including shipping costs)
reviews
Keith Moliné / The Wire (thewire.co.uk)
Themistoklis Pantelopoulos insists that this work is an attempt to dispense with melody and instead focus solely on sound itself, in the manner of the electroacoustic music that has become his main inspiration. Nevertheless, his roots in less academic forms like Industrial and Ambient are immediately apparent - this is primarily a sensuous rather than an intellectual experience, comprising dense organ tones pitch-shifted until they acquire a ringing, metallic edge. In the end, contrary to what Nokalypse might hope, the material here is all about melody, and on that basis the album is a qualified success. "Everlasting Babylon of your Mind", the more energized of the two pieces, is a relentless swarm of steely dissonances that impresses at First but starts to grate by the mid-point as the obvious lack of any real purpose becomes apparent. "Discerning Eye of Mystics" is better for proceeding more cautiously, allowing its chiming resonances to linger.
Dan Warburton / Paris Transatlantic (paristransatlantic.com)
Athens-based composer Themistoklis Pantelopoulos aka Nokalypse spent the summer of 2006 trying to "thrill himself without the use of any melodic elements, at a time when he was seeking non-emotional or gnostic stimulation" (right on!), creating a "vast body" of music which he revisited earlier this year, indulging in some heavy treatment and post-prod and ending up with what Brian Olewnick described rather nicely over at his Just Outside blog as a "messy lasagna" (though moussaka might be more appropriate, I think). The first of the two side-long tracks, "Everlasting Babylon Of Your Mind", is somewhere between Daniel Teruggi's glistening glitzy remix of Xenakis's Persepolis on that infamous and dreadful album that appeared on Asphodel a while back and one of Jean-Luc Guionnet's organ albums, a queasy stew of clusters and whirling glissandi. Side two's "Discerning Eye Of Mystics" is more tonally stable, sounding like a Mecha/Orga drone left out in the rain to rust. Impressively crafted stuff, but a little heavy on the special effects nutmeg and béchamel. Have a glass of ice cold water and an Alka Seltzer (or a Howie Stelzer) standing by.
Brian Olewnick / Just Outside (olewnick.blogspot.com)
Themistoklis Pantelopoulos adopting a somewhat annoying nom. Hopefully it's not only his Hellenic derivation, but the comparison in a surface sense to Xenakis is hard to pass up. The Xenakis of "Kraanerg" and "Persepolis", at least as evidenced here. The piece is a huge mass of swirling sounds, kind of organ-like in essential nature but I get the feeling they're often synthesized mutations from a large variety of sources, some of which might be natural. They're layered one atop the other, several dozen ply thick it seems, into a huge, messy lasagna of sound. It's not bad at all, actually, if (not surprisingly) lacking Xenakis' structural rigor and having, somewhere beneath it all, a rockish tinge (no rhythms, just a kind of guitar-chordy sound). Not bad, easily the best of the three LP releases (Jacques Beloeil - "Bidules 1-9", Ian Middleton - "Time Building") here.
Ed Pinsent / The Sound Projector (thesoundprojector.com)
Nokalypse's rather ghastly record is jarring electronic dischords which drone on endlessly, perhaps in an attempt to recreate the sensations induced by lines of futile and pointless thinking; I deduce that much from the title "Repeated in an Indefinitely Alternating Series of Thoughts" (E73), which is like a mini-essay on psychology. Jointly released by Absurd Music in Greece as A78, this unsettling work was realised by the musician Themistoklis Pantelopoulos.
Frans de Waard / Vital Weekly (vitalweekly.net)
Only a few weeks ago I reviewed a CDR by Nokalypse, the musical project of Themistoklis Pantelopoulos, who also runs the Triple Bath label. Here he has two pieces which he recorded in 2006 already but that are now revised for the release on this LP, a joint venture between UK's Entr'acte and Greek Absurd branch. Nokalypse plays music using software, AudioMulch and WaveLab are two of his favorite toys. With that he creates drone music but it's not the usual kind of drone music. At times it sounds like music that is somehow, somewhere slightly academic in approach, but throughout one listen it isn't. Besides the official academic composers of the sixties, there were also the outsiders, who released music on vinyl. Highly obscure material, and when I was listening to Nokalypse I was reminded of that. His compositions aren't very tight, but rather loosely structured, with repeating blocks that return every now and then, sounds fading in and out. Things are pitched up and down the scale and develop over the course of the side of a record. A bit PBK like, Conrad Schnitzler is never far away as an influence, and it makes two lovely pieces of music. Somewhere between academic and non academic, ambient and industrial, this is a great one.
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