Kobi - "Dronesyndrome"
(Silber Records 2005, silber041)

From Aural Innovations #32 (November 2005)

Dronesyndrome is the second album from Norwegian sound artists Kobi, the first being the 2003 album Projecto (see AI #23). The band is actually a collective, headed up by Kai Mikalsen who collaborates with what the promo sheet describes as "virtually the entire Norwegian experimental underground". Each of the 9 tracks on the CD consists of Mikalsen on sounds & synths, teamed up with a variety of artists on guitar, drums, bass, cello, dictaphone, turnatable and accordion.

My favorites tracks are the ones with Kjell Olav Jorgensen's drumming. "Faint Echoes Ran Round the Unseen Hall (Part I)" is a mixture of dark and eerily intense soundscapes with free-jazz drumming and percussion. And "Yellow Scales Slid Across Oily Roles of Flushed Skin" mix a free-improv jazz drumming style with bubbling spaced out underwater soundscapes. Most of the tracks are primarily ambient-drone centric, and all do a good job of blending avant-garde free-improv elements with exploratory sound-art and ambient excursions, and each transitions seamlessly from one to the next, making for a continuous 50 minute listening experience. Climb aboard and ride the drone wave.

For more information you can visit the Kobi web site at: http://www.looop.no/kobi/.
Visit the Silber Records web site at: http://www.silbermedia.com.

Reviewed by Jerry Kranitz

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