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Like many titles within the Ventricle pantheon, Konkrete Kantikle has no distinct beginning or end. That is to say, if you were to loop the record by linking its last note to its first, you would most likely be at a loss in identifying the intended starting point. Perhaps to state the obvious, songs are not the focus here. Despite certain individual aspects of the record's five tracks, as a whole the music exists in such a way as to blur temporal distinctions; rather, it posits atmosphere over melodic constructs. While the uber-present Dusty (and his Mellotron) are absent from Kantikle, a second stock trait of the Ventricle sound exists in Linda Suzanne. Suzanne's spectral invocations and strangled, wisp-thin lyrical turns float languidly amidst Kelly Thistle's cathedral organ tones and St. Astatine's industrial effects (credited on record simply as 'metals.') The whole of the record's parts are filtered through a soup of reverb, tape-delay and feedback effects (all seemingly analogue based) which smooth any pre-tape clangor into the intended, mist enshrouded, mystery-soaked sonic environs. The entire work shifts as uneasily as a coming storm, and is as equally charged. (PO Box 19523, Seattle, WA 98109, USA)

G.C. Weeks
CWAS #7 - Spring 2001

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