Pmxper (Perila & Pavel Milyakov) - Pmxper

Pavel Milyakov's prolific run shows little signs of fatigue with this latest collaboration with Alexandra Zakharenko, who you might otherwise know as Perila. Zakharenko's spoken word contributions are pretty much the only carry over from her solo work and you can completely disregard any of Milyakov's Buttechno output. Instead, PXMPER bares some comparison to the minimalist dreampop of PV's work on Blue with Yana Pavlova, though with a little less emphasis on the ethereal (though certainly not entirely absent) and a notable shift towards non-linear austere post-punk and minimal wave. Zakharenko's vocal delivery had me thinking a little of Lydia Tomkiw, and you might reasonably understand the whole presentation as something akin to her band Algebra Suicide refigured in the context of Carla dal Forno style dub-pop or the kind of haunted minimal wave we're accustomed to seeing dug by Stroom ala Saskia, Jan Van de Broeke or Cybe. The pair themselves cite Young Marble Giants as an influence, which is fair enough though Pxmper feels a little less primitive and more texturally rich, which is probably a byproduct of the unique approaches to production each have shown elsewhere on other projects. Fans of Voice Actor, the recent Spivak record and the aforementioned Blue LP would do well to check in on this early before this limited pressing is gone and the vultures start pumping (you don't really wanna know the price of the latter on Discogs right now).