PBK & Zan Hoffman On Monochrome Vision

Here's the cover for the new PBK/Zanstones release due out on Monochrome Vision (Russia) before the end of the year. I'm very pleased to announce this as Zan Hoffman and I have been friends since the late 80's.

Description: Zan Hoffman has been doing extensive experimental sound works under the Zanstones name and international collaborations under a variety of names since 1984. He has released hundreds of works on his own label and collaborated with many experimental musicians from around the globe.

Hoffman and Phillip B. Klingler, aka PBK, are longtime friends/collaborators, their co-projects go back to the late 80's. Hoffman has often used PBK's sound sources and has even created several PBK tributes such as "How Doth The PBK?" and "The Man Who Would PBKing".

In 2010, Hoffman created new sound sources for PBK using only acoustic instruments, in this case an accordion and a zither, to create drones which PBK added to and mixed using atmospheric noises and spacey, psychedelic textures. This new work is titled "Mantis Fog Desert".

In addition to the five collaborative tracks, Klingler and Hoffman have each contributed solo tracks as a correlation for the listener to discover what each artist brought to this project.

OUT NOW: PBK & Josh Lay

The new collaboration with Josh Lay is now available at the Syndrom Records web store: HERE. Below is a clip from the album.

Heathen Harvest reviews PBK tape releases

Heathen Harvest reviewed three PBK cassette releases from 2011.

Asian Collaborations, Volume One: "The two tracks that fill the second side of this tape are both deeply interesting, studied, crafted even, pieces of abstract industrial noise. I could happily draw comparisons with Nurse With Wound (at his least mirthful), Dead Voices On Air (at his least rhythmic), and even Merzbow at his most spaced-out. These two pieces contained noise used in ways that even surprised me, shaped and controlled as it was with what sound like dub-like tape manipulations, echoing metalworks rhythms, detuned radio voices and, yes, various shades of noise and distortion."

Cornwall Spectre/Holloway Reservoir Creeps: "These two 20-minute compositions from PBK, a noise and ambient composer based in Flint, Michigan are long-form studies in various kinds of creepy, uneasy soundscaping that runs the gamut of abstract Industrial music styles. Fortunately never veering into the “spooky” trap that all to often nabs Dark Ambient musicians, these two sides cram in a lot of atmosphere and depth."

Deus Ex Machina: "These tracks do have a lot more going on than mere noise; more nuance and layering than a lot of non-noise recordings while retaining a harsh edge, and despite that still feeling restrained and controlled. They’re freeform, abstract compositions with nothing in the way of clear structure or rhythm but with a clear feeling of progression, of direction and of an aesthetic at work. Here genuine noise is layered over tons of different sections of sound – melodic tones and frequencies, voices distant and distorted and clear as a bell, random radio-dial snatches of sound and many other elements."

READ the complete reviews HERE.

PBK: New Collaboration Release

A new collaboration in the works features the core trio of PBK, Mark Spybey and Travis Johnson. Special guest on this project will be saxophonist, John Butcher. The album is not yet ready but due to be released on the Harmonic Convergence label late in 2011.

Read about it HERE

PBK Warfare State/Appeal Reissue Out Now on Impulsy Stetoskopu

Impulsy Stetoskopu has now reissued two crucial noise releases by PBK: Warfare State(1988) and Appeal(1989). These two albums are the heaviest from that time-frame, in particular "Warfare State", with it's 30+ minute title track exemplifying a compositional approach that is now referred to as "HNW" or "Harsh Noise Wall". The "Appeal" cassette is even stranger and more alien with it's indefinable synth abstractions. Beautifully repackaged as a double cassette release with additional rare and previously unavailable tracks. Double side box comes packaged inside an aluminum foil slipcover. Limited, numbered edition of only 100 copies. Get it HERE

PBK + Josh Lay On Syndrom Recordings

Here's the cover for the forthcoming release of PBK + Josh Lay on Syndrom Records in the UK. Combines Josh Lay's horror-noise approach with PBK's psychedelic synth improvisation into a deep, forbidding soundscape. This will be a pro-cdr and should be out a little later this year.

PBK Interviewed in AutoReverse Magazine

C. Reider interviews PBK in the latest issue of Autoreverse Independent Music Magazine:

PBK: "I’m not dogmatic about my work at all. I go from project to project, approaching each one with a different outlook, seeking more possibilities through my process. I know that I want to be honest in what I am doing, I don’t want it to be contrived, so I work very spontaneously and I still play all kinds of games to try and thwart my instincts. Accidents happen in good and bad ways. There are times when you exceed your expectations and other times when you fail yourself. I’m often bewildered by the act of creating music, I guess I still sort of don't know what I am doing, to be honest, and I think that is important too. The post-modernist approach guarantees nothing, it doesn’t come from talent so you can never exactly count on a result. But what it does get to is something talent cannot anticipate, the pure invention of chance."

Interview can be read HERE