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CD
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SOD 139CD
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Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist Max Klebanoff, best known as the drummer for critically lauded death metal outfit Tomb Mold, has slowly expanded the purview of his Death Kneel project. From a spate of hermetic short-form tapes to the uniformly excellent Dawn Simulation on bellwether noise label Chondritic Sound, the project has blossomed into a distinct force within the landscape of contemporary experimental music. Remembering Well might be best understood as a summation of process -- an accumulation of gestures, false starts, and breakthroughs brought into provisional alignment. It articulates a careful balance between immediacy and refinement, tracing the contours of a practice in motion while resolving into a fully realized statement. First takes and impromptu recordings form its backbone, each piece guided by a commitment to capturing a singular animating impulse. Rather than smoothing over discontinuities, Klebanoff leans into them, allowing a dense field of incidents to accrue in which minor sonic events assume equal weight alongside more apparent structural shifts. Central to this approach is an expanded conception of fidelity. Sound is treated not as a neutral vessel but as a variable condition -- elastic, restless, and materially expressive. Phone recordings are diffused through empty parking lots; damaged handheld devices imprint unique distortions onto signals; binaural microphones register the incidental rhythms and spatial responses of rooms. These methods do not simply document the music -- they participate in its formation, producing a layered audiographic surface in which perspective and texture remain in constant negotiation. Despite this fundamental instability, a charged emotional atmosphere emerges: a kind of uneasy intimacy, at once intrusive and disarmingly human. It's a violent sort of pathos that, to my ear, finds its most apt comparison in the harrowing sonics of Jason Crumer's 2008 masterwork Ottoman Black. This is music that maintains a proximity to the abyss, yet is tempered by a softness that draws the listener closer to something fascinating, volatile, and alive.
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