Call me shallow, but first impressions count with me. (I know I’ve mentioned this in past reviews.)  So when I open a disc from an experimental collective called PAS and it turns out that PAS stands for “Post-Abortion Stress”… I think I can be somewhat forgiven if I burned the disc into iTunes with more than a touch of trepidation. Despite reading in the press release that the term refers to those who “have been aborted by society,” the material on the disc (I refrain from the word “music” here for reasons noted below) reinforced the idea that trepidation was warranted. Pure Energy Output Sessions is, as noted in the release, “music from the fringes of perception . . . [not] defined by any particular conventions or viewpoints.” Which is to say, anything goes once PAS gets started, guided by their mission of free self-expression. The work here is more sound sculpture than music per se, and it is, by and large, aggressive sound sculpture, dynamic and tending toward assault. As such, it will challenge the taste and, perhaps, tolerance of most listeners. Pure Energy, by design, is a disc solely for the unbiased, wide-open, art-focused mind that can embrace a very abstract, unfettered approach–and I’m honestly not sure, having listened, if that’s me. Sample PAS and decide if it’s you.

Available from CD Baby.