Pacific 231 (France)

Album presentation

Experimental electronics

Pacific 231 - project of Pierre  Jolivet French musician nowadays residing in Ireland. P-231 came into sight in early 80-s and belonged to the first wave of industrial groups. Early albums were released on the labels of Le Syndicat, Cause And Effect и Bunker Records. Really invaluable assistance in due time was rendered by American outsiders Psyclones with whom Жоливе recorded a pair of albums under the name Psy 231 released on their label Ladd-Frith.

The earliest album recorded almost 25 years ago and released quite recently on the label Old Europa Cafe became one of the first ones in power electronic style. "Thule Apocalypse", 45-minute piece, compared with today's leaders of this trend, sounds a bit unusual. It's more likely some transition period from old industrial school. But still it adheres to the main laws of the genre: harsh pulse of electronic modules, powerful psychological impact of the raw monotonous noise and multiple samples as musical events turning a listener towards the theme of The Second World War -- anthems, marches, waltzes, cabaret music and, of course, speeches, orders, commands, scanned slogans and appeals.

The next album "Unusual Perversions" which became a real rarity was produced about the same manner. Exploiting themes of fetishism and different sorts of perversions, it resembles early albums of Die Form and Blackhouse.

"Power Assume" (1987) is much more experimental in sound and appeals to quite another perception type -- in no way to some numb stupor and paralyzing fear but to complex balance of concentration and relaxation governed by the harmony of resonances and transitional processes. At the same time the album is highly organic and all-sufficient -- this is a thing in itself. The whole struggle occurs on the speculative level. You may even ignore it at the presence of such request…

Pierre is extremely exact in dealing with musical matter, slightly elucidating only those areas that do not bring danger whereas not flattering your ear. His interest concentrates mainly on sounds -- awkward, free of gloss but not free of sonic charm -- that could be emitted by some fossil beasts in death-combat.

 Recently Pierre's activity has distinctly decreased and the style has undergone substantial changes, moving far from noise music into the sphere of experimental electronics and synthetic sound. His single "Heuristic Occlusion" released in 2001 in a collection circulation (100 copies) on the Austrian label Syntactic contain two pieces of refined computer music, spectral variations of minimalist sequences. Album "Ethnicities" released in 2006 is the first after lengthy interval lasting for god knows how many years.

Suffice it to say that material for him has been recorded within the last 20 years! Audition time of this 50-minute trek as if embraces the whole epoch:  urbanistic scenery gives place to natural tropical landscape, pseudo-ethnic rhythm dissolves in psychedelic ambient. The album was released in three formats (CD, vinyl and DVD) by a new French label Rotorelief known by the Tribute-to-John Balance.

Pierre's interest to ethnic music finds its extension in the last album "Palestine" recorded a month ago on Old Europa Cafe in collaboration with Rapoon. This is a kind of ethno-trans suite similar in esthetics to albums of Muslimagauze (the album, in fact, is a tribute to Brin Jones). It was released in a special package and its presentation will take place within Pacific-231 Russian Tour together with a new video-performance program "Stiffle" not yet released anywhere.