Sion Orgon - The Zsigmondy Experience

The Zsigmondy Experience is the second full length release from Sion Orgon, a Welsh based musician who is a member of the rock group Rocketgoldstar and frequent collaborator with Thighpaulsandra - Sion Orgon has appeared on all of Thighpaulsandra's releases. The Zsigmondy Experience follows the release of Orgonised Chaos, Orgon's debut album of experimental electronics released on Experimental Seafood a few years back. Once again, Sion Orgon involves a whole bunch of Welsh artists including members of Rocketgoldstar, Thighpaulsandra, Mike Edwards (formerly of Jesus Jones) alongside Peter Christopherson of Coil, TG and SoiSong, Seb Goldfinch and others. The Zsigmondy Experience clearly continues Orgon's predilection for obtuse and strange sounds but, this time, he's wrapped them around some appealing sprawling songs that take in string sections, pop song melodies, with elements of dark ambient, industrial, prog elctronics and vocoded vocals. That it doesn't actually fit into any of those genres is what make The Zsigmondy Experience so compelling. I'll make no bones about it, this is a great album.

The arching drones of 'Evo-Devo' with its moaning electronics and flurry of cymbal crashes hints at a work of progressive dark ambient. As an opener it's entirely misleading. The treated voice manipulations by Peter Christopherson that follows opening the fragmentary tricky rock-out of 'I'm In Black Out' recall the heavily compressed and cut-up textures of Coil's Loves Secret Domain but it bursts into crisp rhythms and deep flowing bass lines and disembodied trumpet parps, thereafter flicking continuously between short blasts of industrial guitar riffs, and electronic treatments anchored to the taut rhythmic backbone. It's wonderfull stuff.

After this, 'Paper Wings' comes as a surprise: a cluster of treated plucked strings, electronic effects and plundered toys swelling into elongated slabs of synths, where graceful piano chords and marimbas are joined by the flowing, fragile voice of Sion Orgon, appearing occasionally massed and shrouded by an ensemble of strings. It's a glorious moment molding the experimental with the orchestral splendour of a guitarless Sigur Ros.

From then on The Zsigmondy Experience runs through passages of vocoded vocals, with the entire thing sculpted with electronic tones, snaps, clicks and crackles, adding textured experimental undertones. Thighpaulsandra appears on 'Some Bitch Stole My Umbrella': its thumping percussion and computer generated meltdown swelling into massive swathes of synths and a recurring series of mammoth crescendos interspersed with processed spoken nonsense before settling into pumping electronics with a typical Thighpaulsandra aggro-vocal, pursued by cheap keyboard melodies and stabbing piano chords. Even the most song based track, 'Window On The World', is transformed with Mike Edwards melodic pop-voice, shadowed by treated and effected voices, violin scrapes and skittery electronics.

The range of styles, partly due to the list of collaborators, is incredibly varied but perhaps unsurprisingly The Zsigmondy Experience does resemble the work of Thighpaulsandra. And while Orgon does opt for the lengthy intros and outros Orgon's work seems to tie the stranger ends of electronic experimental music to more emotive based material. I'm liking this a lot, and so much more than his Orgonised Chaos release. With The Zsigmondy Experience Sion Orgon might just find himself flung into the arena. Great stuff. For more information go to www.lumbertontrading.com