Pasang - School

 

Released: October 30

At just four tracks in length that comprise less than twenty minutes, School tracks over a lot of sonic ground in a short amount of time. It comes out as this kind of odd and somewhat unique blend of noises, field recordings, distortion, guitars, and droning textures that feels like so many ups and downs stacked on top of each other. Padang explains this wide ranging and erratic nature as something reflective of his days in school, hence the album title. The sonic qualities and the heavily swinging motifs paint a dreamlike pictures of the days as something wonderful and new but also stressing and confusing as wavy drone sequences give way to ear ripping distortion in the blink of an eye. 

With each track, there are instances of the track being relatively stable and consistent throughout, such as on the eight minutes drum and noise solo that is “SP+.” There is also the constantly switching “Thunder 15000 STRONG” with its disregard for smooth transitions. And among these differences, the latter is one of my favorites on this EP.  It starts out noisy, with a crushed wall of droning noise and never allows the listener to fully grasp onto a specific motif throughout. By the time you think you’ve figured out where it going, it shifts dramatically into something else, sometimes something noisier and sometimes slightly less.  But the droning nature of it al combined with the penchant for sudden and jarring noise out of nowhere caught my ear in a way that was fun if not a bit difficult to quickly adapt to.