Reviews...

"CURIOUSITIES", descenes (Washington, D.C.) Date and reviewer unknown

Bomis Prendin, Test, Artefacts. 3-01951

     The thing I think that irks me the most about much "Progressive" and "experimental" music is that it essentially is impressionistic and personal rather than expressive and public. Primarily, it serves to incarnate certain theories, or observations, or moods of the artist for their own satisfaction. If other people like it, that supports and validates the artist's vision to some degree, but to large degree the audience's reactions are considered.
     I'm sure most people working the genre would'nt feed you that line in those terms, but certainly that's how their work functions and they are the ones who produce it.
     On the plus side, operating in this fashion, such artisans often do come up with sounds and images that audiences can find entertaining, instructional, inspiring, or whatever -- either literally or ironically (vis the Y. Turds' affection for Throbbing Gristle). this still is, in many cases, a by-product of the original aesthetic impulses in question -- but it happens nonetheless.
     Arlington's Bomis Prendin are that kind of outfit. A lot of Test seems to have benn created in order to satisfy their own curiousity or test their own abilities and theories.
     But I do enjoy much of this. Some of the instrumental passages seem singularly unmoving, cloyingly cutesy weird, but then I feel that way about a lot of the internationally known purveyors of same -- Throbbing Gristle, Monte Cazarra, etc. Now the Prendins do seem to operate from a far more playful, less menacing element than the aforementioned, but some selections here are as enjoyable as the former's work. They're a bit better at crafting very song-like structures as well.
     Test is a 10-inch flexi-mini l.p. available locally for an absurdly low price. Fans of nouveau-musique would be well advise to lend a sympathetic ear. So how about some gigs, guys!