Live albums are difficult to review. Minimalist experimental electronica albums are also difficult to review, which leaves me in something of a quandary, because this album is a live recording of minimalist experimental electronica. To make matters worse, Keith Fullerton Whitman is hardly among the world's foremost recognisable names, and the sequencing here is, well, non-existent (the whole album is one long, forty minute track). Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

Well, it would be a recipe for disaster if Whitman wasn't such a compelling musician. I will admit that I'm not overly familiar with his work, but clearly he's got some good ideas, and they come out beautifully on this record. There are no "songs" as such, which justifies the sequencing of this is a single song, but the music definitely does wind and evolve through different phases. The first twelve minutes or so are placid and calm, although there is a generally increasing feeling of tension as more and more bass pulses and distorted percussive noises pop in. From here, it glides upwards like a fiery comet of distortion and dissonance, before it levels out at around the twenty-seventh minute, when the percussion shifts, suddenly sounding a lot dirtier and more organic than the sterile, grating aural carnage that has just come before. The music seems to crash down to the floor, finally ending with a sense of lulled serenity that barely hints at what has just taken place.

People are either going to love this, or they are going to hate it. Apart from that one piece of music, which is constructed into a beautiful arc that would make it meaningless if it were to be chopped up, there is nothing to complain about here. The recording is crystal-clear, and the packaging is attractive (I presume it's the front of a building from Lisbon, where, you guessed it, this set was recorded), and does the job.

Judging music like this on purely objective levels is meaningless. There are no catchy melodies, no clever lyrics, and no other reason that I can recommend it, save for the fact that it's utterly breathtaking. Yet, it will also appeal only to a narrow group, so I can't say that this is an essential recording. Post-rock fans are invited to check it out, as are lovers of the esoteric and the unusual.