PENGO - Cosmology Of The Broken Saints

Approaching the world of cd-rs is a good way to take the pulse of the musical underground, a term that, in most cases, is synonymous with disorienting, visionary, uncompromising music. Sometimes, even unheard-of. That may not quite be the case with America's Pengo, who by now boast a fairly substantial catalogue of "underground" releases, but it's still true that their music remains, today as ever, one of the many good reasons to keep our ears pricked up for whatever manages to surface from the depths.

In this "Cosmology Of The Broken Saints" we find two long compositions-improvisations, recorded live. After moving on from out-spazz-noise to noise reworked through a drone-psychedelic lens (a shift that took place just a year ago with "Alchemy And Bullshit"), Jason Finkbeiner, John Schoen, Nuuj and Joe Tunis now seem intent on developing a more atmospheric approach, one of subtly induced hypnosis. Music like this seems to stem both from purely improvisational impulse (though never entirely left to chance) and from a desire to bring to life an all-encompassing flow of sounds and noise, a continuum of musical signs forever balanced between (abstract...) descriptiveness and raw, naked expressionism. "Seven Sparrows" opens amid cosmic rumbles, industrial fractures, microscopic pulsations, almost recalling the memory of Dead C's "Driver U.F.O.", before slowly evolving into a concert of frequencies, distortions and a spacey clattering-flailing of guitars.

When the sound turns more meditative, you'd almost expect our subjects to veer into Indian-tinged territory, within a spectrum of influences that could easily count early Pink Floyd and the most stretched-out, dreamlike Charalambides as key reference points. The ending, however, is entirely at the mercy of overtones and assorted gloom, a prelude to the following "100 Years Of Rust/Hobo Sacrifice", which opens with an even more unsettling scenario. The distant stirring of very low frequencies, noises scattered here and there: it's almost like zooming into an almost impenetrable sonic world, and one nearly fears that at any moment everything could collapse into the sound of an explosion. Instead, true to form, Pengo again choose the path of slow but inexorable construction, flowing first into a sort of para-industrial mantra, then into an out-space voyage that still takes in Eastern oxygen, and finally into a disordered web of sonic symbols and harmonic collapses, somewhere between Throbbing Gristle and Rake.

It is, in short, a pulsating music, always bearing sinister vibrations, concrete regurgitations (the noise of presses, electric shocks, unoiled gears), faded slides depicting a feverish, anguished and anguishing everyday life. Keep an eye on them, because they could turn out to be great.

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30/04/2026