Baffling Signals by Clive Pearman

Linear Obsessional finishes the first year of activity with an appropriately energetic and powerful release by the guitarist Clive Pearman - here playing in a duo with the drummer Mark Braby.

The music for this EP was originally improvised by Clive & Mark in three sessions in January & February 2012; with Clive editing and adding post-production in the autumn.

Stripping the basic rock band set-up down to the extreme of one live guitar interacting with a live drum kit, "Baffling Signals" incorporates elements of kosmische, art-rock and dub. Throughout the EP there are confusing pointers (Baffling Signals indeed) to rock band dynamics (hectic climaxes that go nowhere, guitar lines slowed to half-speed mimicking basslines, intros that won't develop into songs) but seemingly stripped of vocals and riffs, leaving ghostly dub versions.
"Zig Zag Shoots First" demonstrates the duo improvising with one minor edit, whereas in contrast "Baffling Signals" takes Mark's formidable drumming and Clive's thrashing guitar and puts them through a digital blender.
"American Idol" apes the middle eight to an unheard song; "No Step" acts like a traditional centre-piece, but with no centre. Perversely the last track is "Getting Started" and uses as its base the first minute after the record button was hit back in January; looping and twisting the recorded fragment until it returns to the first track "Let's Finish This".

Linear Obsessional presented music from the edges of culture, from the gaps between category....
2012 - 2022

linearobsessional.org
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