Suzy Poling
is known throughout the art world for her photography, installations, sculptures, collages, and more, often placing a focus on refraction of optics and mirrors as well as geometric abstraction. Since 2002, she's been performing and recording music as
Pod Blotz
. During her surreal, immersive concerts, she dons strange insect-mummy costumes and inhabits a miniature world filled with shifting colors and psychedelic pyramids, while swarming, diseased electronics emanate from the speakers. Landing somewhere in the vicinity of industrial noise, darkwave, and abstract techno,
's music is beguiling, haunting, and slightly grotesque. Her third vinyl full-length,
Transdimensional System
was recorded at
Poling
's downtown Los Angeles studio, with sounds sourced from the collection of the Vintage Synthesizer Museum, located in Oakland. The album's eight pieces are filled with scouring synth sweeps and deadpan vocals, weaving in and out of shuddering, short-circuiting pulsations. Some moments evoke a sort of broken new wave, with a detached synth bass line heading "Extrasensory" straight into the depths, and "Life Like an Electric Surge" having more of a black strobe-light swirl to it. "Lights in the Middle of Nowhere" is filled with unsettling crashing noises, making it seem like reality is unraveling and the world is falling down piece by piece, until rapid jittering either furthers the damage or finds a way to escape from it. Like
's entire body of work,
is cathartic, heady, and highly transfixing. ~ Paul Simpson