Mike Pathos
People

Already at the time of its release (2005), it was clear that "People" would be the first and last album by Mike Pathos. Confirming this was the personality of the author, about whom nothing is known except that he is a strong-minded madman (noted for his attempt to declare himself dead bureaucratically) and that he was signed by John Zorn's Tzadik. 

Unconventional cellist, Pathos spends years conceiving what is his artistic testament: a shocking and extraordinary album together. Violent, carnal, infernal. 

If we are looking for someone who comes close to the sound of this madman, we can stay within the terms of the abused and noise-rendered cello by citing an Okkyung Lee (she too a friend of Zorn), but even here we remain quite distant and not very close to the description of what "People" contains.

"People" is an nightmare: it is like entering the head of a madman. There is a way in, but no way out. And if you get out, something in you breaks, self-control is destroyed, it becomes only a word. 

There is a cello, obviously to carve out these ten gems, but forget any notion of classical music (even contemporary, even avant-garde). The instrument exists, it is present, but it is reduced to a whining corpse. Made out of tune, ugly, very noisy. Shaped with electronics until it becomes a stinging lament. 

And if "People" seems to start with two tracks that appear as sketches of real songs ("Envoy" and "Mourner"), it will end with delving more and more into real delirium. As if every capacity for self-control and sanity gradually disintegrates, kills itself, shreds. Pathos also sings, but in his own way obviously: he sings off-key as he pleases and doesn't care, mutters and screams like the most annoying drunkard ("Citizen," where the alternation of his voice tears open a fanfare of satanic sound).

Already in the next "Novel Author" the voice itself is shaped, rended, turning first into a chipmunk with rage and then the testament of a leper. The music accompanies the syncopated and then funereal declamation, inclined between euphoria and suicide. 

And when you least expect it, here comes "Liar". It’s nothing but a sick and unsettling cover of John Lennon’s "Imagine" rendered punk, rotten, and without a future.  Then pure suffering in the slow blues of "String Player" torn apart by a flow of harsh noises that make Merzbow seem like a more controlled neo-melodic. It sounds like the last day on earth, and it is beautiful and haunting at the same time.

An unrelenting harsh flow continues in the extraordinary "Traveller": an evil drone with catharsis in the blood, a sound kamikaze that hits immediately and throws you on the gloomiest beach in the world while your ears buzz. In the eardrums, the whisper of a zombie that survives this attack of nuclear spasms from the otherworld.  Then everything ceases, and the sounds are sucked away, who knows where. You’re dead.  Only the distant singing of an atheist angel remains, dragging you to its feet. And the crossing can only continue in submission: a cathartic agony of pure noise begins again. 

A step from the beyond is "Fatalist," the encounter with Lucifer himself. While something elsewhere (seems to be a flute, but I'm not so sure) sings a cheerful and reassuring melody, in the foreground, the cello weaves anxieties without resolution, and the voice is reduced to a soundless and putrefied croak.

The darkness. The beyond is indescribable, but you are there with your feet floating in it. Everything is black, but nothing has a body. More cannot be said. "Penant," painful, is this: 13 minutes of floating in nothingness, vulnerable and naked. Swimming in an ocean without a surface, looking for wreckage with no shape. The sigh of a soul that regrets not having realized all it could in its life.

But there is no possibility of redemption: to seal it, there is the infernal and desperate "Liars," an incomprehensible moan bombarded (LITERALLY) by bursts of violence (even for the listener) that seem electronic, but they are not of this world. Uncontrolled moaning destined to spill into a ghost track that is nothing but the hopeful gift of reincarnation after the narration. Needless to say, this is not possible, as indeed, there have been no subsequent albums by Mike Pathos.

Once again, we have fallen into hell, which this time is not a real sensation (as, for example, happened in Zorn's "IAO" or the raw episodes of Naked City), but more metaphysical. We are in hell between the temples of a man (a genius?) that few will really appreciate. 

With the hope that witnessing the passing of a madman in the form of music will not afflict you too much, I say: love it. Love this record even if it's noisy, delirious, otherworldly. Because you will hear nothing that comes close to what is reproduced here with such simplicity. 

Give my regards to Charon.