Nokalypse
Repeated in an Indefinitely Alternating
Series of Thoughts LP (E73/A78)
Nokalypse is Themistoklis Pantelopoulos (1982). Based in Athens,
Greece, he has been making electronic music for the best part of
a decade. Initially producing beat-driven and ambient work (as a
solo artist and as a member of several bands), he abandoned
rhythm and melody in 2006 following a prolonged and deepening
exposure to various experimental, improvised and classical musics.
Pantelopoulos also established his label, Triple Bath, that year.
The two compositions that make up Repeated in an Indefinitely
Alternating Series of Thoughts (Discerning Eye of Mystics and
Everlasting Babylon of Your Mind) are extracted from a vast
body of work created during the Spring and Summer months
of 2006. According to Pantelopoulos, the objective of this
recording session was to see if he could ‘thrill himself’ without
the use of any melodic elements, at a time when he was seeking
non-emotional or gnostic stimulation; sound itself was to be the
sole, fundamental component.
Revisited in 2009, the tracks were mixed and processed further,
resulting in Nokalypse’s most lavish electroacoustic work to date:
toxic, metallic, alienated sound, far away from academic theories
or political beliefs...
First edition of 250 copies. Co-published with absurd
£10
Themistoklis Pantelopoulos insists that this work is an
attempt to dispense with melody and instead focus solely
on sound itself, in the manner of the electroacoustic music
that has become his main inspiration. Nevertheless, his
roots in less academic forms like Industrial and Ambient
are immediately apparent — this is primarily a sensuous
rather than an intellectual experience, comprising dense
organ tones pitchshifted until they acquire a ringing,
metallic edge. In the end, contrary to what Nokalypse
might hope, the material here is all about melody, and on
that basis the album is a qualified success.
Keith Moliné in The Wire
—
[A] comparison in a surface sense to Xenakis is hard to pass
up. The Xenakis of Kraanerg and Persepolis, at least as
evidenced here. The piece is a huge mass of swirling sounds,
kind of organ-like in essential nature but I get the feeling
they’re often synthesised mutations from a large variety of
sources, some of which might be natural. They’re layered one
atop the other, several dozen ply thick it seems, into a huge,
messy lasagna of sound. It’s not bad at all, actually, if (not
surprisingly) lacking Xenakis’ structural rigour and having,
somewhere beneath it all, a rockish tinge (no rhythms, just
a kind of guitar-chordy sound).
Brian Olewnick at Just outside