11.25.13 — “Pascal’s Law” by pg.lost

pg.lost

If you only listen to one song tonight, make it “Pascal’s Law” by pg.lost (2008, from the album It’s Not Me, It’s You!).

pg.lost is an instrumental post-rock quartet from Norrköping, Sweden. They’ve been around since 2004 and have released a couple of EPs and three full-length albums. Many lineups ago, they were known as Before You Give In, and they somehow ended up being called pg.lost. I have no idea what it means or where it came from. It’s a bit of a shame, because I really like their original name.

Apparently, a couple of years ago, some guy in the United States landed himself a record deal by trying to pass off pg.lost’s music as his own. Unfortunately, I don’t know any of the finer details of that story, but it sure would make a good movie.

Like most bands who get lumped into the “post-rock” genre, they don’t like that tag. They describe themselves the same way that most “post-rock” bands do: “experimental instrumentalists”.

I only listened to a couple of pg.lost songs, and this is the one that stuck with me the most:
“Pascal’s Law” by pg.lost

This particular brand of “experimental instrumentalism” is very much like what Explosions in the Sky is doing. And Mono. Everything is so lush, and cinematic, and multi-layered. Tonight’s song knocks me on my ass a couple of different times. Fist, it’s the interesting production decision to have the first 42 seconds coming exclusively from the left channel. Then the right channel fades in, and for nearly the entire song, there are completely different things happening on either side of the stereo field. I’m a big sucker for that kind of thing, and it makes it essential to listen to this with headphones on.
The second time that I get knocked on my ass is right at 5:03. There’s a lengthy bit where there’s a lot of feedback and white noise very low in the mix compared to the snare-heavy drums. That goes on for a bit, with a military-style cadence, and just whispers of the guitars feeding back. But at 5:03, the guitars and bass come back pretty strongly. And suddenly. It’s that “hammer drop” that I like so much.

It’s all very emotional. They’re painting a picture on a huge canvas with really broad, heavy strokes. There’s not a lot of bright colors in that painting, to be honest. Purples and browns and deep reds. It’s one of those paintings that everybody interprets differently.

It’s a nice painting.

You can buy the digital version of It’s Not Me, It’s You! from the pg.lost bandcamp page.