pmxper: s/t

Pavel Milyakov (Buttechno) and Aleksandra Zakharenko (Perila) unveil their collaborative debut as pmxper. Recorded (mostly) remotely between 2020-2022, but mired in a mutual interiority, their sublimely smoky venture bridges strains of spoken word, strung-out country folk, jazz and etheric kosmische with a timeless control of mood and atmosphere that amounts to one of the finest episodes in either's oeuvre. In a properly enchanted blurring of identity, they almost entirely dispense with digital tools in favor of more pastoral and timeless energies; guitar, sax, jazzy brush drums and a Rhythm Ace FR-3 drum machine, a sort of precursor to Roland's simmering CR-78. It's that sax that takes you places though, daubing accents of blushed romance over walls of guitar in various formations, all of which sidestep the widescreen cliché in favor of something more nuanced and unusual. This isn't the open road of Lynch and Badalamenti, more the careening trailblaze of Conny Plank and Holger Czukay, Angela Conway and Bruce Gilbert, The Jesus & Mary Chain and Hope Sandoval's Stoned & Dethroned, like a melted Venus in Furs, soft, and fritzed.