Pareidolia refers to the perceptual illusion in which we believe to see faces or animals in objects and patterns. On a visual level, amusing examples might be distorted grimaces in tree bark or house façades smiling. In music, we might hear living beings where there is actually only shimmer, noise, reverberation. A lovely deception – and a tool for Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke. The two drone musicians have long been collaborating with evocative sound design.
On Pareidolia they distill concert recordings from a 2023 two-week tour through Europe. For this collaboration, Ishibashi & O’Rourke edited and remixed material from those evenings, shaping it into a playful four-part collage. Anyone expecting the »imploded pop music« of Ishibashi’s recent solo album may be disappointed by the experimental slowness of »Pareidolia«. This album begins precisely where our susceptibility to interpretation sets in. Some passages hover in granular drones, others tip into the slightly abrasive. But what’s that? I hear a creaking door, birdsong, a wind chime.
Every listener may have entirely different associations. Pareidolia is a ruse, a magic trick that makes its audience doubt its own suggestibility. Thus, it’s not an album one can easily listen to in the background. And that is exactly where its allure lies: »Pareidolia« lets on that listening itself is a creative act.
