If you're home really late at night and you randomly spin the radio dial to see what you pick up, you just might end up falling asleep to burbling, phased-out static. To distinguish such an act from listening to
The Köner Experiment might be harder than you think. Here, the
Experimental Audio Research collective restrains their avant-garde indie noise rock to come up with ten untitled tracks that try to explore the seedlings of collaborator
Thomas Köner's more minimalist philosophies. Fortunately, such pretension doesn't necessarily make for a stillborn experience. When these pieces sound like an insomniac's heartbeat, pulsing along to an unsettling world of twilight paranoia, the effect is deeply disturbing. There's a mechanist's glare to a number of these tracks. An exhausted lucidity that probably points to one of the most potent and coherent constructions of all the
E.A.R. releases so far. You just have to ignore those times when the album subjugates itself with pointless irregularity and you'll be happier not knowing when the band shoegazes off into that middle distance.