REVIEWS FOR ORIGINAL EDITION
His album A Ravishment Of Mirror came out in 2014, when Dragon’s Eye was making its brief second attempt at trying to release CDs. Novak took a step back from the label in 2013, but returned motivated at the start of the following year, funding four releases via Kickstarter. This is one of them. Chartier had just launched this now-revered alias and moved to L.A., where he and Novak ended up neighbors. Drawing from queer icons and Hollywood’s twinkling glamour, A Ravishment Of Mirror is a borderline-Lynchian auditory homage to the sprawl—a dubby, captivating slice of unearthly ambience.
—daily.bandcamp.com
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a place of visions, mirrors, glittering lights, noir stories and secrets. All these influences are developed in a dreamy and bucolic way: the result is a certain ecstatic enchantment, which is also narcotic, full of absences and melancholia. Defective synapses blend ambient fascinations that are worked into four tracks of different lengths (26, 7, 5 and 11 minutes respectively), interspersing sequences that are variously surreal, reflective, faint, dark and seductive. The titles of the elaborations are deliberate quotes (Peg Entwistle and Tab Hunter are just some of the names mentioned) and they enlarge the experience of the listener in sensitive and substantial ways. The atmospheres are misty and mellifluous, somehow kinematic: winces, lyrical passages and deceptive shadows are suspended between unreal melodies and repeated passages, transformed into granular blends and inner elaborations.
—Neural Magazine
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I’ve reviewed a few Richard Chartier releases, but this is the first one I’ve heard under his Pinkcourtesyphone moniker. Indeed, I actually initially mistook the album for a Line release, given the artwork/wallet packaging. “A Ravishment Of Mirrors” has four tracks in all, with two short (in this context) pieces bookended by two longer works.
Although, there are clear resonances between the Richard Chartier and Pinkcourtesyphone sound worlds, straight away you can hear a different tone at work. Where “Richard Chartier” is rigorous and academic, in the best sense; Pinkcourtesyphone is much more welcoming. Both are possessed by a glacial chill, but where the former is somewhat hard-edged (not a criticism at all, mind), the second operates in a much more haunting, melancholy manner. My brain conjures up an image of the academic going to sleep in a very sleek, modern, soulless hotel. There’s a mournful emptiness to the album, a sad beauty: beauty despite everything. The first and longest track, “Why Pretend/The Desire of Absence/Faulty Connections” is pushed along by a deathly slow, reverberating synth chorale; whose two-note call crawls the sterile corridors of our imaginary hotel, echoing around each corner. The track builds with the aid of a blunted drum machine, which lurches along in a dulled motorik; the ghosts of our building amassing around it. These reverberating rhythms continue in the second piece, as do the drifting synths; but here, the lines mass and tangle into a more sinister drone. The third piece, “Falling Star (for P. Entwistle), is the shortest and most colourful of the four. Founded on stumbling loops, it sees Chartier introducing piano-like “trills” over a shifting background; its probably also the prettiest track, but still inflected with a gloom.
The fourth and final track ploughs a similar furrow to those I’ve described above and looking at these words, it might seem that “A Ravishment Of Mirrors” is repetitive and monochrome; but its far from that. It does utilise a concentrated palette, certainly; but this serves to give the album a consistent and coherent sound and tone. The palette is sprinkled with enough colour to keep it busy and vibrant, but these elements are used sparingly and judiciously; as a result of which, the empty melancholy at the heart of the album remains unweakened. Interestingly, the most striking (for me, at least) of these elements was the use of vocal samples; cropping up briefly in each track. This is a far cry from the “Richard Chartier” work I’ve previously heard. Following that thought, I feel that you could convincingly and agreeably play this to people as an “ambient” album – whereas a “Richard Chartier” album might be taken as something alien and oppressive in the room. But, like all his work, it is imbued with careful construction and attention to detail and, like all his work, demands a listen. This is a very quietly good album, which fixates and meditates on the atmospheres found in Burial’s sounds. I’m sure you don’t need any greater persuasion than that.
—musiquemachine.com
Richard Chartier recently raised the curtain up on his interesting project Pinkcourtesyphone by a series of releases with thematic interconnections. His third full album under this guise followed his relocation in Los Angeles, whose close connection with Hollywood secret sources of noir stories, hidden by a pellmell forest of mirrors, lights, roadways, temporary limelights and evanescent kudos filled the pool of sonic suggestions where the listener is going to swim while listening to “A Ravishment Of Mirror”. The very first seconds of the long-lasting opening suite highlights this cinematic connection by a sample which could have been taken from the score of the most dramatic and schmaltzy scene of an old sentimental movie, which precedes a possible awakening as you can guess from the female vocal sample repeating “What was it you dreamed?”: the following languidly amniotic sonic fluids could render the after-dream off-guard reverie, where your own breath and other sonic inputs sound like washed by frequencies that sleeper’s brain keeps on generating. The opening suite seems to be ideally made up of three parts: the one I’ve just described is “Why Pretend”, the second one – “The Desire Of Absence” – get closer to the entrancing ghostly sonorities by Tor Lundvall, while the final one – “Faulty Connections” – seems to describe a connected scene where the producer of such a reverie, where lithium and endorphine seems to join their voices, lets the sound of her walking on high heels resound into empty hallways while the contrails of that reverie got tragically stirred into menacing shadows. Your imagination is going to get highly stimulated by following glasses of cinematic laudanum that Pinkcourtesyphone serves with guessed dedications: almost silent buzzes liquefy time on “Pixels…Sometimes…Broke Your Heart” (for A., where A. refers to iconic pinkish Barbie-like billboard model, actress and singer Angelyne!), the outpourings of nocturnal cruising evoke out-of-time dimensions on “Falling Star”, a track that Richard dedicates to Welsh actress Millicent Lilian “Peg” Entwistle, the first one of a long series, who killed herself by jumping from the letter H of the notorious Hollywoodland sign, while the endearing ambient tunes of the final “62,000 Valentines” have been dedicated to Tab Hunter, who received such a great number of Valentine’s Day cards after the tabloid magazine Confidential picked on that talented young actor for his sexual orientation. Besides the firmament of (sometimes slightly ironic) references, the learned dosages of diluted sounds by Richard Chartier are going to provide a really immersive listening experience.
—chaindlk.com
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Newest full-length from sound artist Richard Chartier’s noir-ish drone project. This album is full of slow, bell-like loops, ghostly footsteps, foggy hiss, sunken melodies, and just a general dark, rainy, mysterious atmosphere. Like The Caretaker’s best work, it’s sad, fragile, beautiful, and haunting. 25 minute opener “Why Pretend / The Desire Of Absence / Faulty Connections” goes through long stretches of moody droning before finally landing on a slow, sleepwalking rhythm for the last few minutes. “Pixels… Sometimes… Broke Your Heart (For A.)” is another exploration of cavernous spaces and distant sounds, with gentle whispers and soft, faraway bursts. “Falling Star (For P. Entwistle)” has some soft, muted, trudging beats, which sound like the ghosts of hip-hop or drum’n’bass tracks, along with thick, swirling ambience and piano melodies, and more dusky whispering. “62,000 Valentines (For T. Hunter)” is more misty, foggy slow-moving ambience, feeling like a stroll through an inactive city on a late afternoon during a weekend, where no buildings are open and nobody’s around because the weather is dismal and there’s nothing going on… which makes it a perfect scenario for a destination-free walk filled with solemn, singular reflection on life.
—theanswerisinthebeat.net
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A Ravishment of Mirror aurait pu faire une excellente B.O. pour Maps to the Stars de David Cronenberg. Du moins, j’imagine. Ce troisième album de Pinkcourtesyphone (derrière lequel se cache Richard Chartier) se propose en effet de décrire la part d’ombre du halo galactique qui entoure Hollywood. L’occasion pour l’Américain de donner dans une ambient un peu plus ténébreuse que d’habitude, même si on y trouve quelques éclaircies (d’un beau rose). Des portes qui claquent sur deux notes de synthé, des voix synthétiques qui en appellent à la gloire, des beats électriques et des inserts de field recordings… toutes les prétentions et les désillusions dont Chartier s’inspire illuminent l’un et l’autre côté de ses partitions-miroirs. Une fois de plus, impossible de ne pas suivre Chartier.
—lesondugrisli.com
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Richard Chartier’s renown as a specialist of systems enhancing the psychological features of sound-derived cognition is grounded on the same faculties that cause his records – includingA Ravishment Of Mirror – to work magnificently as “home installations”. A reiterative continuum informed by the strategic placement and sequencing of cryptic aural hues establishing blurred borders between entrancement and harsh reality, memories emerging from a past that we were deeming as more or less blanked out.
The Pinkcourtesyphone project is depicted as a “syrupy dream” by its very originator, yet the final products aren’t that viscous in this reviewer’s ears. Music born from methods whose prerequisite is the ebbing and flowing of gradual, if needfully fragmentary melodies, the consequent growth of particular frequencies capable of stopping profound souls in their tracks. Something commanding attention for a flash, a voice whispering “hey – remember what you lived” to the remote consciousness. An admonishment for what is still difficult to fathom, the preparation to hurtful experiences through the excretion of knotty thoughts from the mind.
A remembrance – as non-conceptualized as it may be – is frequently bearing thorny gifts. A persistent pulse recalls the heart’s sufferance for someone unable to decode your actual essence in spite of the quiet efforts for an explanation. An awesome droning lament (the opening of “62,000 Valentines”, for example) instantly conveys a sense of impossibility to verbally draw an aching emotion pushing from the inside. Everything seems to revolve around this kind of implied regret, no help granted in finding answers that will nevertheless arrive one day. It’s all damn beautiful in this temporal dilation, vocal ghosts and lengthy reverberations muzzling percussive patterns, endless distortion and dizzying see-saw lullabies.
What the memory retrieved, together with a number of private youth souvenirs: Eno’s Music For Airports and Jeff Greinke’s Timbral Planes. Alio Die’s wonderful “Breathing Again” fromThe Flight Of Real Image. The grogginess rendered by the granular static picture of the TV screen as white noise signaled the end of transmissions late at night in the early 70s. We were asking many “whys” to ourselves while going to bed. Already aware that, during the following morning at school, nobody would have put across deeper concepts than those materialized by our old Minerva record player on any given solitary Sunday afternoon.
—touchingextremes, Massimo Ricci
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Heard as comment on the superficial surreality and narcotic, hallucinatory atmosphere of his LA environs, the project finds an inquisitive balance of ambience and an underlying, seductively void-like darkness. It’s slow-sipping music for art-deco mansions in the hills and smoky bedrooms alike; playing on that Lynch/Badalamenti vibe that somehow perfectly mirrors the strange paradigms of waking and dream life. The album seamlessly introduces three pieces of sanguine narcotic drift in the twenty minute opener, ‘Why Pretend / The Desire of Absence / Faulty Connections’ before opening up the suggestive negative spaces of ‘Pixels… Sometimes… Broke Your Heart (for A.)’ where elusive chamber harmonics tease from behind ambient tones reminding of AFX’s SAW II set. ‘Falling Stars (for P. Entwistle)’ is a more concise slice of crepuscular atmosphere, surrounded by cicadas and the tinkle of cocktail glasses and a lone voice drifting on the breeze, whilst ‘62,000 Valentines (for T. Hunter)’ melts into more intimate, internalised space for ten minutes of warm yet deeply detached ambient ambiguity conjuring that feeling of staring into the mirror for too long…
—boomkat.com
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After last year’s Foley Folly Folio and Elegant and Detached, audiovisual conceptualist Richard Chartier further pursues his Pinkcourtesyphone conceit with A Ravishment of Mirror, seemingly a hyper-timbral satire on/elegy to his LA homeland–city of light and noir. The object of its sonic semiosis is a mythic early Hollywood and the fixation with dreams and surface, delusion and deception. ‘A plastic organic unity ready to enfold and repackage you,’ in Chartier’s words, for which he concocts a queerly compelling microsound-lounge ambient-drone hybrid to mirror a woozy waking life in spectral settings. Less static soundscape than protean collage, “Why Pretend / The Desire of Absence / Faulty Connections,” goes from narcotic drift through micro-orchestral tone poem in a choreography of swells and billows, wheezes and whirrs, discreet plosives and inchoate melodies. The suggestive psychoactive apertures of “Pixels… Sometimes… Broke Your Heart (for A.)” fuse oneiric glassine drift and queasy listening redolent of SAW II and haunted ballroom. ‘I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain.’—read the suicide note of actress Peg Entwistle, found dead under the Hollywood sign, to whom is dedicated “Falling Star”—a vignette of smudged echo and smears of twilight tone, cicada chirp, cocktail tinkle, and a lone breeze-borne voice. “62,000 Valentines,” hommage to actor Tab Hunter, hosts a cavernous swathe of romanticist remotion. The Mulholland Drive of Lynch/Badalamenti comes to mind, as, between the nothingness and eternity of elegiac beauty and toxic abyss, Chartier finds an elegant balance of surface blithe spirit and self-conscious noir-ish undertow for one of his least oblique strategies and most expressive works.
—igloomag.com
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Voix inconnue, et pourtant familière. Rêvée, peut-être. Pinkcourtesyphone, qui n’est autre que Richard Chartier lui-même, continue d’explorer les méandres d’une beauté cinématographique changeante et inquiétante.
Projet en marge et clairement distingué de ses travaux sous son propre nom, Pinkcourtesyphone avait donné le jour à un premier album fascinant et obsédant, Foley Folly Folio, en 2012. S’en était suivi le tout aussi recommandable Elegant and Detached, sur le label Room 40 tenu par Lawrence English. A Ravishment Of Mirror vient ici offrir une suite magistrale et hypnotique aux labyrinthes sonores déjà déployés par Richard Chartier.
Avec pour point de départ la ville de Los Angeles, cet album se voile de miroirs trompeurs, de lumières fugitives et de rêves évanouis. L’un des morceaux est dédié à Peg Entwistle, jeune actrice qui s’est jetée du haut de l’inscription Hollywoodland en 1932. On croise ici l’amertume de ce qui n’était que mirage, sur fond de douceur narcotique. Le paysage urbain se referme peu à peu sur celui qui s’y égare, dans un enveloppement vertigineux et insaisissable. Déambuler puis se perdre.
Pinkcourtesyphone joue avec les durées, les rythmes, et étire ses morceaux pour effacer tout repère chronologique. Les couches sonores spectrales semblent instables et hésitantes, mais déroulent pourtant un mouvement lent et continuel ouvert sur des abîmes brumeux et irréels. La répétition est à l’œuvre, créant l’illusion. Murmures féminins, froissements de matières et mélodies agonisantes. Les masses changent et les rythmiques se mélangent, comme sur l’impressionnant morceau d’ouverture de plus de vingt-cinq minutes Why Pretend / The Desire of Absence / Faulty Connections. Les notes se transforment et s’effacent petit à petit, transfigurées par des râles métalliques, des souffles amnésiques ou des pépiements étranges.
Un scénario où l’on roulerait de nuit, tous feux éteints, sur des perspectives hallucinées à la fois rassurantes et anxiogènes, familières et inexplorées.
—swqw.fr
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A Ravishment of Mirror, the third album by LINE manager and sound artist Richard Chartier under the Pinkcourtesyphone name, explores a less hermetic world than Novak’s. Inspired by Chartier’s recently adopted home, Los Angeles, the album material was “formed from places, plastics, and particulars” and uses Hollywood’s fixation on dreams, surface, and deception as its creative impetus. In this case, Chartier’s Hollywood is the glamorous one of yesterday, one more associated with stars like Clift, Davis, Garbo, and Gable rather than the Clooneys and Streeps of today. The recording’s dominant piece is its twenty-six-minute opener, “Why Pretend / The Desire of Absence / Faulty Connections,” which follows bravura flourishes with a controlled ebb-and-flow of whirring sounds, sea-sawing tones, whooshes, exhalations, and muffled detonations—a dream-like, industrial-glam drift of noir-like murmurs that, oddly, evokes feelings of loneliness, yearning, and desire.
In keeping with the album’s City of Angels theme, “Falling Star (for P. Entwistle)” is titled after Millicent Lilian ‘Peg’ Entwistle (1908-1932), a Welsh-born English actress who appeared in several Broadway productions and one posthumously released film, Thirteen Women. Chartier’s ironic title can be taken to refer not only to the actress’s possible career trajectory but also to the fact that she jumped to her death from the ‘H’ on the Hollywood sign at just twenty-four. “62,000 Valentines (for T. Hunter),” on the other hand, presumably pays homage to American actor Tab Hunter (b. 1931), who starred in over forty films.
As different as they are, the album’s four ghostly settings suggest that a prototypical Pinkcourtesyphone piece is less dronescape than shape-shifting soundscape collage. Undercurrents of decadence and corruption run through the material, too, in a way that alludes to the seamy underbelly of the city and the Hollywood Dream. Nevertheless, A Ravishment of Mirror is enticing and at certain moments as psychoactive as absinthe—in Chartier’s own words, “a plastic organic unity ready to enfold and repackage you” and “meant to be slowly sipped.”
—textura.org
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Pinkcourtesyphone is a new-ish nomenclature for Richard Chartier, an artist much beloved at A Closer Listen. Have a look round – he’s normally there or thereabouts on the end of year lists. With A Ravishment of Mirror, it’s likely he’ll be there or thereabouts again for this is a magnificent album – amid some pretty tough competition it is, I think, one of his best. This is lovely, warm electronic music, from the gradual build of the lengthy opening track to the melancholic ambience of closer “62,000 Valentines (for T. Hunter)”. I heard recently someone reminiscing about the anticipation for a 26 minute track on their favourite prog band’s new album – because if it’s that long it must be good, right? – and being inevitably disappointed. “Why Pretend / The Desire of Absence / Faulty Connections” is a powerful argument in favour of long tracks – it’s a track with a proper narrative and for a minimal electronic track it feels like a lushly orchestrated tone poem. Given the various dedications on the tracks, this might be one of Chartier’s most personal statements—it’s certainly one of his finest hours.
—acloserlisten.com
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Bien, entramos en esta tercera entrega en un escenario donde al leer “sueños de Hollywood y engaños”, nos pueden venir a la cabeza diferentes películas donde el/la protagonista venida de un pequeño pueblo quiere emprender una carrera exitosa en la que empezará por pequeños papeles y pateándose todos los castings posibles y, a medida que transcurren los días, debe empezar a trabajar de camarera a tiempo parcial para poder subsistir y va relacionándose con gente poco confiable que le irán apartando del brillo y glamour soñado de aparecer en la gran pantalla.
Suena a argumento sobado la verdad y quizás mi futuro nunca fue ser guionista, pero aunque Chartier apunta a Douglas Sirk y a Fassbinder, el primer corte de este “A Ravishment of Mirror”, titulado “Why Pretend – The Desire of Absence – Faulty Connections” (en su largo desarrollo que abarca la mitad del disco) conecto con el inicio de “Mulholland Drive”, con esa escena de noche cerrada y con el personaje encarnado por Laura Harring huyendo de aquel accidente de manera deambulante y atemorizada hasta llegar a la casa donde acaba conociendo a la chica de pueblo con talento que busca en Hollywood una oportunidad interpretada por Naomi Watts. Es mi apreciación obviamente, pero en este corte central del álbum se sucede intriga y una sucesión de pasajes donde nos situamos en un lugar y espacio no muy lejano de la tormenta de “Interior Field”, de los ecos y reverberaciones apagadas donde podría encontrarse con Pole, Jan Jelinek, Philip Jeck, Biosphere, Leyland Kirby, GAS, Coil o Kreng.
En esa narrativa es capaz de volver a encontrarse en un terreno donde manejar diferentes propuestas del ambient y llevarlas a un terreno cercano al cine noir. Para la segunda parte del disco, se estructuran tres piezas que buscan diferentes emociones y vuelve a encontrar pequeños respiros en la belleza de “Pixels…Sometimes…Broke Your Heart (for A.)”, con ese aparente tono de dub ambiental preciosista que conecta casi en el recuerdo con aquel disco en solitario de Marc Leclair, “Musique pour 3 Femmes Enceintes”, y con la paleta detallista de Stephan Mathieu y la sombría percepción de Thomas Koner, introduciendo al final un sampler onírico que le añade un tono poliéster y la aparición de un ángel azul. En todos sus discos aparecen samples vocales en mayor o menor medida, pero en este disco siguen documentando el proceso de Chartier en los últimos tiempos de enfrentarse ante la voz en sus trabajos al igual que hizo junto Kid Congo Powers en “I am a Photograph” y de momento los resultados son realmente agradables como el sample utilizado en “Falling Star (for P. Entwistle)” y llegando al final y aprovechando la conexión con Douglas Sirk recordamos “Imitation of Life” con su horrible colección de clichés trasladados a una crítica a Hollywood.
El final sedoso, ingrávido y lánguido nos devuelve a una noche estrellada con “62,000 Valentines (for T. Hunter)” esperando para caer rendidos ante el amor y creando una postal que me recuerda a Flying Saucer Attack o This Mortal Coil. En definitiva, nos regala otro sensacional disco. Para el cuarto disco “Description of a Problem” ya hay confirmadas una serie de colaboraciones que nos hace esperarlo con los brazos abiertos como son las de William Basinski, AGF, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Kid Congo Powers y Evelina Domnitch. Dejen las líneas abiertas.
—conceptoradio.net
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I am afraid,
I am a coward.
I am sorry for everything.
If I had done this a long time ago,
it would have saved a lot of pain.
Cette note de suicide est celle de Peg Entwistle, jeune actrice américaine retrouvée morte sous le panneau Hollywood en 1932. À cette jeune femme, Richard Chartier dédie un des titres de son dernier album, publié sous l’entité pinkcourtesyphone : Falling Star. Le morceau, tout en échos indéchiffrables et fragments pianistiques, synthétise à lui seul la prouesse du musicien : entre beauté élégiaque et abysses délétères, l’album tout entier sonde l’âme humaine et son goût pour l’équivoque.
Avec le dernier morceau dédié à Tab Hunter, acteur américain, A Ravishment of Mirror semble confirmer son inspiration, la naissance de la gloire pelliculée en toile de fond. Pourtant, l’interprétation n’est pas si simple : Why Pretend / The Desire of Absence / Faulty Connections, le magistral morceau d’ouverture, ainsi que Pixels… Sometimes… Broke your heart, qui lui succède, lorgnent davantage vers une technologie contemporaine.
Point donc ici d’analyse historique, mais une topographie brumeuse du Narcisse moderne, né avec le XXè siècle, à la fois acteur et spectateur de sa propre déchéance. Séduisant, guindé, il sourit sans cesse en espérant tromper la mort, mais n’est jamais qu’un portrait flou, souvenir évanescent.
À grand thème, grand ouvrage : Chartier livre ici son disque le plus abouti, ode élégiaque et anxiogène aux milles subtilités, claustrophobique et vertigineuse, à ce mirage auquel l’homme aspire depuis qu’une caméra a posé son objectif sur lui. Le regard de l’autre et la solitude de son absence tapissent l’album de sentiments contradictoires, rendant l’écoute pour le moins déstabilisante.
A Ravishment of Mirror ouvre sur quelques poussiéreuses notes de musique orchestrale — qu’on croirait tirées d’un disque de Leyland Kirby, avant de les noyer dans une obscurité sans fin. Là où Kirby questionne le temps et son impact sur la beauté, Chartier approfondit : une fois la beauté disparue, que reste-t-il?
—dmute.net
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Lo que en las obras de Richard Chartier es silencio en su otro rostro es ruido cubierto con capas rugosas de notas que se rehúsan a desaparecer. El tercer trabajo de Pinkcourtesyphone continúa su trayecto en los rincones desconocidos del sueño, un sueño filmado en colores que se desgastan cada vez que una mirada intenta traspasar la pantalla. “A Ravishment Of Mirror” no son más que cuatro piezas, pero cada una de ellas a su vez contiene movimientos que van desplazándose lentamente hasta un abismo que atrapa el audio orgánico hacia si mismo. Las diferencias con los otros planos dibujados por Chartier son evidentes, sin embargo, los puntos que unen una vía de enfrentar una composición y otra también. El deslizamiento pausado y el exponer las células audibles más elementales esta presente en ambas entidades, pero en estos registros resultan levemente amplificados. En estas composiciones a una superficie de sonido ligero se suma otra que se adhiere a su cuerpo extendido y, sobre ella, varias más, generando una masa que se traslada a lo largo de los segundos desde un punto hacia otro, un avance lento que deja huellas de hierro líquido, y que además produce una fricción entre esas diversas superficies adosadas. Las melodías que interrumpen el ruido de fondo parecen animar una celebración de estrellas cuya piel se desliga del cuerpo inyectado de sustancias artificiales. El sample de una voz femenina invita a entrar en el sueño, lo mismo que una hipnótica melodía. Dos notas son las únicas guías que determinan el paso lento de los minutos que parecen horas perdidas. Ese es el tono que marca la primera parte de “Why Pretend / The Desire Of Absence / Faulty Connections”, una suite espectral de casi media hora, con sus variaciones al interior de las cintas desgastadas. La orquesta de acordes muertos paulatinamente va perdiendo su figura, para decantar en algo que no es música, sino más bien una sensación indescriptible, un estado narcótico de la mente, finalizando con haces de luz de neón enredándose con la luz de la ciudad. “Pixels… Sometimes… Broke Your Heart (For A.)” posee una estructura aún más extraña, solo ritmos intercalados en medio de una atmósfera borrosa e indescifrable. De nuevo, dentro de esta pieza se van generando movimientos unidos entre sí. El ritmo se quiebra y emerge un delicado, perturbadoramente frágil. “Sometimes… Sometimes… Sometimes…” se oye mientras la armonía que yace tras ella se destempla. “Falling Star (For P. Entwistle)” parece recoger la vida dentro de la ciudad, desde la intimidad de una habitación de hotel hasta las vastas carreteras de asfalto derretido, adornado con pianos oxidados y mujeres anónimas. Las melodías estáticas terminan por absorber el espacio circundante. “62,000 Valentines (For T. Hunter)”, luz y calor, oscuridad y resplandor velado en retroceso, superficies pétreas flexibles. “When I fall in love. When I fall in love…”, así hasta la eternidad.
“Los Ángeles, una ciudad de espejos, luces parpadeantes, historia obscura y profundos secretos es el nuevo hogar de Pinkcourtesyphone. Este tercer álbum explora los sueños y decepciones de Hollywood, para ser bebido a sorbos lentamente… Todos pretendemos, pero en Hollywood pretender es una substancia obscura, una unidad orgánica y plástica lista para ser desplegada y empacarte”. Las capas de sonidos orgánicos conforman una nueva entidad de música e imágenes que se desvelan dentro de sueños y melodías desvanecidas. Notas que se niegan a evaporar, notas transmutadas en resonancias distantes inmersas en el ruido agónico de fragmentos de luminosidad opaca.
—Hawai
