The clown prince of avant drone pays tribute to his namesake for the 1000 year celebration of the original historical Charlemagne in Germany. Consisting entirely of his minimalist piano work, and remixing and processing by Christoph Heemann, this hymn to the apocalypse is a compelling one.
Again, the artwork that adorns this disc is a metaphor for the music: the almost whimsical outer Photoshop work of Palestine riding some bizarre leopard/horse hybrid with a grimace on his face (though seeing him as all Four Horsemen of the apocalypse is a bit of a stretch), while the inside painting of a modernized Hieronymus Bosch, complete with destroyed modern military equipment and animated skeletons make for an amusing contrast, which carries over into the music.
With the exception of the short opening piece of urban field recording that, with its heavy reverb and siren make it sound like a precursor to violence, the disc consists of one 45 minute live performance by Palestine using only piano that is subtly, but powerfully, treated by Heemann into a slow developing piece of violence and madness, played with a sense of glee by Palestine. This joy comes across like Nero's fiddling while Rome burned, Palestine pounding away on the ivories with a massive grin on his face while the world falls apart around him.
As is expected by a composer who has ties to Philip Glass and Tony Conrad, the songs are built on a drone of simplicity, often consisting only of a few notes played in rapid, repeating succession. Palestine attacks the lower register keys with a force that transforms them into carillon bells chiming with dread, mixed with higher end plinking and patterns. The rapid pace in which it is all played makes it difficult to discern whether the piece grows more and more complex in its chaos or if it is simply the human mind losing track of the notes. What is for sure, however, is that the disorienting pace only adds to the sense of dread created.
Christoph Heemann's processing work to the track seems subtle, but its effect is very strong. As the track continues through its lengthy duration, he slowly increases the overdrive and the reverb until, eventually, the track no longer has the color of the piano, but the sound of notes is compressed into pure shards of tone, sound and noise until it shifts fully into a rattling sheet of metallic noise. And then the piano comes to a dead stop, allowing the nuclear fallout and radioactive ash of the end of the world to slowly settle down around the listener, bits of sound resonating throughout the air.
The sound of the apocalypse certainly does blossom on this disc, a realm of sound that is as beautiful as it is ugly. Let us all just hope if this world does come to a crashing end anytime soon, there will be Charlemagne and his piano full of stuffed animals to play humanity out.
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