Album Notes

I am originally from Windsor, Ontario. Started a noise project called Knurl (alien8recordings.com) in 1994, started Pholde in 2000. (theambientping.com)

Pholde is a project in which I produce sounds from metal of different tensile strengths. Circular saw blades,car springs, iron meshing, and fan blades are bowed and scraped with hand files, smooth and threaded metal rods, angle iron,and blocks of steel to produce atmospheric, haunting soundscapes.

Here is a review of this CD by TJ Norris that he wrote for Igloo Magazine.

:: Alan Bloor (Knurl) releases In Accordance With Conscience using metals of various tensile strength as the primary sound source. This is the type of recording I hope for in a stack, like a wasteland, of needless notes and empty airspace. "Form and Hold" is a haunting starter track, reviving the ghosts of experimental elders. Its metal play has a crypt-like gothic quality, all slow-motion, all darkly lush. Having collaborated with Aube, Canadian noise artist Bloor is no stranger to his ambient medium, having tinkered with scrap metals and other found objects in his past. On "To Regard As Being" we are treated to an atmosphere so sparse, yet so expansive. The sound is infinite in its primary tonalities. With no overdubbing this disc is noise purity at its most minimal extreme. Deviating further in "Solecism," Pholde provides us with the colloquial solution to our darkest hours, a nightmarish mirage where the only reflection is of oneself, ad infinitum. Ancient castles, ruins and torture chambers illuminate with visual license here. There is a very sub-deep impression of remote movement in "Any of Various Compounds." A prototypical altered world, so minute it could live within another being. The audience is treated to live bowing of intangible objects which are in essence heavy and about dimension and weight. Bloor’s treatment sterilizes our expectation of what can be heard inside this android world of metallics. "Centered Over A Point" closes this 40-minute recording with breathtaking mystery. In a class with only Maeror Tri and possibly :zoviet*france:, Pholde is one of the few current artists presenting work of such serious daring experimentation.