I’m sure that most people in our comprehensively compressed culture would be grateful of some extra space; some extra time to spend with the kids, get outside, clean the gutters or catch a movie. It seems that bastions of the avant-garde can also be time poor, what with international festivals and collaborations aplenty, it must be a challenge to actually allow an album to gestate and grow in an organic manner. That’s where the support of friends and true believers can be of great import “Frans de Waard and Extrapool” (an arts body from Nijmegen in The Netherlands) began the Brombron project in 2000. Previous parings have included Greg Malcolm with Tetuzi Akiyama and Andrea Belfi in collaboration with Machinefabriek. Z’ev should need little introduction; his powerful percussive influence has been shaking the very world since the early 70s. KK Null was the founder of Japanese “progressive hardcore” three-piece Zeni Geva, plus he’s played with all manner of musicians including Jim O’Rourke, Fred Frith and Chris Watson. Brombron 17 sketches out six muscular pieces that intertwine the processed percussive assault of Z’ev with the decidedly dark and creepy electronic headspace of Null-san.
The spooked slow-motion percussion of “ESET_03” reminds me of Supersilent; it’s all hanging sequences and woozy sonorities, subterranean rhythms and electronic efflorescence. The drums trip over one another as fifteen atmospheres of pressure slowly weighs down on your chest. “ESET_01″ ricochets through the stereo-field, strafing electronic waves bore into granitic rock, reducing it to rubble. The second part of this tune ascends to a galaxy far, far away, where extra-terrestrial tribesmen practice a new form of percussive martial arts. The longest piece on Extra Space, Extra Time, “ESET_05” starts out with Demdike Stare-style nocturnal occult offerings, as a reverbed-to-infinity stringed instrument slowly surrenders to the drummers imperative. Itchy, hyper-kinetic rhythms trace out a trajectory into the cosmos, before the inevitable descent leaves you on a windswept moor blasted by a cold northerly wind. The duo save the best for last, “ESET_06” reminds me of Harmonia on steroids – cinematic sweeps and martial woodblock rhythms unfold and break apart, leaving you wondering which way is up and why an earth you felt it so essential to clean the gutters today, when you could simply pontificate the geometry of divinity.
Oliver Laing
