Pacific 231 "Deep Jet (Soundscapes Of Conflict)" cd

Even though the history of Pierre Jolivet's Pacific 231 goes back to the mid-1980s and is still alive today, you may not find his name very often mentioned on

these pages. There are enough releases, yet not many find my way. Jolivet was from France but has been in Ireland for a long time now, and his background was in noise music and cassette releases. Noise and cassettes may have been left behind in favour of CDs and electronics of a more exciting nature. I believe it's all about computers and software these days. Jet engines are at the core of his new work, the machine of sound and war. For every positive aspect of a technological invention, there's also a negative (you may wonder if being unable to fly is something you would miss in your life). Machines always have Jolivet's interest, as he named his project after a composition by French composer Arthur Honegger from 1923, one of the most famous ones in the world of classical music, commonly thought of as depicting a steam locomotive. I don't recall off hand if Jolivert ever made a work with train sounds. I don't know if he uses field recordings as part of the music here; it could be,

but it also couldn't.

I know the Aussaat label as a noise label, but what Pacific 231 does here is far from noise; at least, it's a different kind of noise. Six of the seven pieces last precisely nine minutes, and the last ten minutes and two seconds. Each piece goes seamlessly into the next, and the first few have a rather dark ambient approach. These might indeed be jet engines or electronic imitations of jet engines, and either way, they sound fine. Each of these pieces shows a slow and minimal process, altering the frequency range of the sounds from low to mid to high end and as the album evolves, so does the music. The music becomes noisier and meanier, yet sometimes returns to a more ambient form. There is that constant swinging back and forth of the music. Curiously, each piece seems to be named after a jet engine, such as the F-104, A-10 or the Hydra 70, but that doesn't mean the sounds are derived from said engines (and, again, they might be). Whatever software

Pacific 231 uses works very well to create this engine-like quality. Even if one disregards the whole engine and war machine concept and takes a more musical interest, this is a great CD. Not one I associate with this label (but maybe there's the connection of years ago), but a refined and distinct different take on noise and one I enjoy very much. (FdW