The Answer Is In The Beat

Viktor Timofeev: Palace of Peace and Reconciliation LP/Live at No Moon (Lo Bit Landscapes, 2021)

August 27, 2021 at 8:03 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Viktor Timofeev is a Latvian sound artist who has worked with avant-rock group Nihiti and the Quantum Natives digital collective in the past. This is the follow-up to a 2011 LP he released on Lo Bit Landscapes, and was originally supposed to come out in 2016, but is only seeing the light of day now. Palace of Peace and Reconciliation is the LP half of this vinyl/CD release, and it flows between digital confusion, post-rock melancholy and poetic emptiness. After two continuous pieces of noise, heart-searing guitars, and GPS-type voices, “Portal of Zin 1” is a chilling ambient drone-out. “Portal of Accord” takes up most of the second side, and it veers between black metal growling, fragile glitch, and washes of electrified noise and rushing synths. Just when it seems like it’s cooling down, it ruptures as it slides into “Portal of Zin 2”, an almost cathedral-like convergence of stained light and heavy organ (even if it isn’t actually an organ). The companion CD is a live recording that charts a different course than the album itself. Here, he plays with overdriven cheap drum machines and nightmarish distortion, not quite screaming his brains out but casting it outward with delay. Sounding half improvised and half drawn into a trance, the low fidelity makes the set sound a bit playful, but it’s filled with ghostly melodies which rush out and drift, rendering it both haunting and exhilarating. “Mi Sky” is a bit of a curveball, with Timofeev looping his voice and skittering, shooting vibrations so that he sounds irritated, then ramping up into power electronics-like feedback bursts. “Omna” starts off as a high-speed thrill ride which sounds like Lightning Bolt taking control of a drum machine, then is driven by this sort of radioactive Buddha voice, occasionally shaken by loud crashes. “Ruka” has more of a Black Dice-esque way of contorting manic voices and toy drum machines. “Eracing” runs free for a bit but mostly gets caught in the glare of the sun. Tracks 7 through 98 are all silent, then 99 is a Colin Marston remix of the LP track “Portal of Zin 1”. It’s a dark chasm transmission filled with wrong number disconnections, demonic slithering, and finally the stunned reaction of the sight of a world that’s withering away.