FAKESCH, MICHAEL Marion (Musik Aus Strom / Studio K7) 2lp 19.98
Swathed in stealthy Designer's Republic packaging, Michael Fakesch's "Marion" is the first solo album from half of the German electronica duo, Funkstorung. As with most Funkstorung related projects, Fakesch's sound is superficially identical to that of Autechre. Yet, upon closer investigation, "Marion" veers ever so slightly from the archetypal Autechre sound with a bleaker take on the streaming pulse of melodic "electrons" and a more spastic fracturing of the electro breakbeat.

FANNYPACK Ghetto Bootleg (Tommy Boy) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "Hit It"
MPEG Stream: "Pop That Thing"
MPEG Stream: "Hey Mami - Sharaz Mix"

FANTASTIC PLASTIC MACHINE Beautiful (Emperor Norton) cd 14.98
If you've been itchin' for something house-y for your warm summer nights, look no further than this, the third album from Tomoyuki Tanaka aka Fantastic Plastic Machine. Reaching back to the 70s for some soul and house moves embellished with some Brazillian accents and flute flourishes. A comment on the music straight from the horse's mouth, "Comparing my music to a girl, I used to like a 'cute' girl but now I prefer a 'beautiful' girl." And much of his usual sweet, fluffy electronics from his previous self-titled and 'Luxury' releases are certainly absent on 'Beautiful'. That's not to say this isn't another playful outing for Mr. Tanaka. It's just that the 'girl' sure resembled a groovy Barry White this time around. And i just noticed that I'm not the only one who thinks this. Printed right on the front cover is a review clip from the Miami Herald tagging it as "Barry White for a house music age." Okay! Includes a cover of Frankie Knuckles' classic "Whistle Song".
RealAudio clip: "Beautiful Days"
RealAudio clip: "Whistle Song"

FANTASTIC PLASTIC MACHINE Beautiful (Emperor Norton) lp 15.98
If you've been itchin' for something house-y for your warm summer nights, look no further than this, the third album from Tomoyuki Tanaka aka Fantastic Plastic Machine. Reaching back to the 70s for some soul and house moves embellished with some Brazillian accents and flute flourishes. A comment on the music straight from the horse's mouth, "Comparing my music to a girl, I used to like a 'cute' girl but now I prefer a 'beautiful' girl." And much of his usual sweet, fluffy electronics from his previous self-titled and 'Luxury' releases are certainly absent on 'Beautiful'. That's not to say this isn't another playful outing for Mr. Tanaka. It's just that the 'girl' sure resembled a groovy Barry White this time around. And i just noticed that I'm not the only one who thinks this. Printed right on the front cover is a review clip from the Miami Herald tagging it as "Barry White for a house music age." Okay! Includes a cover of Frankie Knuckles' classic "Whistle Song".

FARAH Law Of Life (Italians Do It Better) 12" 9.98
More sultry late night space disco jams from Italians Do It Better. You might remember them forom their tracks on the After Dark comp.

FARMACIA Crucial Sky In The Land Of Premonitions At Lorenzo's Weekend (Psych-O-Path) cd 14.98
We all agree here at AQ that this is a really amazing disc. We also all agree that it's tough to describe! Which is maybe why we didn't manage to review it right when it first appeared a few months back. But now we'll try, since we like it so much and want you know about it. Simply put (which is impossible), Farmacia from Argentina straddle the line between minimal dance music and rhythmic noise. Crucial Sky In The Land Of Premonitions At Lorenzo's Weekend (there, doesn't that title tell you all you need to know? no? uh, yeah, you're right) is the work of a trio who are making their OWN original music first and foremost, not something we hear everyday. There's an experimental, home-brewed, kit-bashed approach here that possesses some of the charming weirdness of Argentine AQ faves Reynols without sounding like them... much more user-friendly, these guys! It's a sort of playful industrial/electro music, part Throbbing Gristle, part Aphex Twin, part Mouse On Mars, part Ratatat. One track even reminds us of Itavayla, or Trans Am. There's bopping abstract noises, wordless vocals, distortion and drone and disco-friendly beats. Surprisingly beautiful, beautifully surprising. The three members are credited with the use of plenty of analog synths, samplers, computers... an array of ethnic flutes... eggs, noises, and "atmospheric crucial voices"... y'know, the usual stuff. And the results are, as we said, tough to describe. But we figure it's got a wide appeal, to fans of Kraftwerk and Cluster back in the '70s... to fans of Lindstrom yesterday. Totally recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Doctor Krupa"
MPEG Stream: "Estas Tecnicas"
MPEG Stream: "Que Se Le Va A Hacer"

FARMERS MANUAL RLA (Mego) dvd 32.00
In theory, this DVD produced by Austrian electronic experimentalists Farmer's Manual consists of "every locatable live recording and more dating from 1995 until 2003." The press release goes on to describe that these performances were "about algorithms and their artifacts. Clicks and textural discontinuities were rampant. The demeanor of the performers was stoic: that of accountants working a spreadsheet program rather than artists expressing themselves. Despite the apparent detachment of the performers, the musical pace was extremely rapid, both in terms of events per second and the speed of textural change." Despite the claim of a total running time of whopping 03:21:38:03 (d:h:m:s), all that could be extracted from computers-as-DVD-players we rely on here at Aquarius was 17 minutes of footage of 3 guys aimlessly breaking through a cheaply constructed wall. But maybe it's just as well we didn't find three whole days of that! Caveat emptor.

FATBOY SLIM On the Floor at the Boutique (Astralwerks/Skint) cd 16.98
"The definitive and official DJ mix-cd by Fatboy Slim, packed with 19 slammin', hands-in-the-air party anthems..." says the sticker affixed to this documentation of the last night of the famous Big Beat Boutique club. Good for dancing, but armchair listeners' interest will dwindle quickly. A bit antiseptic and predictable. In fact, if it's party music you want, the locally-produced Future Primitive discs, especially Z-Trip and Radar's live set, have much more integrity, wit and originality. But each to her own!

FAULTLINE Control (Fused and Bruised) 10"lp 9.99
Very nice tweaked electronica with lots of processed strings (which are not cheesy) that end up sounding like Matmos or something from Skam.

FAUST Freispiel (Klangbad) cd 17.98
Legendary krautrock band Faust's 30th anniversary is being celebrated with not free pinball and fireworks, but remixes... The remix cd ep that preceeded this was ok, if unneccessary. Here's the full remix album, with one of that Soft Cell guy's mixes from the ep, plus mixes from other mostly Euro electronica folks (Kreidler, Howie B., Surgeon, Funkstorung among them). Dead Voices On Air and, interestingly, The Residents also appear. All the tracks remixed come from Faust's recent (and quite good) Ravvivando album. Our verdict: still unneccessary, and not ok. But at least the remixers aren't violating classic old '70s Faust tracks, like with Can's "Sacrilege" remix project. And electronica fans will find this to be a fine electronica comp, like so many others. But Faust fans aren't going to see any improvement over the originals (not to be expected anyway) OR any other reason to listen to this...it's just uninteresting and predictable. Too bad, 'cause Faust are such an interesting band. If they HAD to do a remix album for their 30th, they should have picked artists with more of their eccentric artistic spirit. We'd be more keen on Reynols or Boredoms remixes, maybe Philip Jeck or Aphex Twin...oh well.

FAUST VS. DALEK Derbe Respect, Alder (Staubgold) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Ok, just in case introductions are in order: Faust is the classic Krautrock band from the '70s who resurrected themselves in the '90s, demonstrating that they still knew a thing or two about making weird and avant-garde psychedelic rock music. Dalek, meanwhile, is a genre defying, indie-rock-scene-crashing rapper from New York whose album on Ipecac two years back was a big hit 'round these parts and elsewhere. The Dalek / Faust connection first became public when a Dalek cut was included on Faust's Klangbad: First Steps compilation. We then heard rumors that the two were gonna do something together...at last, here is the fruit of that unholy union! Krautrock and rap, that's a first I guess. (Krautrap? ugh.) But it makes sense in light of Dalek's allegiance to dub and electronica and Faust's interest in the same... So, how did this collab turn out? Sounds more like a Dalek record than a Faust one overall. Dark, scary soundscapes stretch out over the first track -- percussive miasma, with somewhere in there latter-day Faust guitarist Stephen Wray Lobdell (Davis Redford Triad) generating clouds of blue-black -- before Dalek starts dropping rhymes on track two, "Hungry For Now". Beats ricochet dangerously as Dalek does the urban griot routine over the grinding of the Faust factory. It's kinda in the same illbient, claustrophobic dub-sphere as Spectre and the WordSound crew, or Techno-Animal, with whom Dalek previously has worked. Faust are certainly capable of generating some heavy duty darkness -- as they have gotten older, they seem to have delved more into the Industrial-Ambient sounds their old albums perhaps presaged. You'll find no references to the surreal pop element of Faust's '70s sound here, just some hardcore hip hop in a nightmare void.
MPEG Stream: "Hungry For Now"
MPEG Stream: "Dead Lies"

FAUST VS. DALEK Derbe Respect, Alder (Staubgold) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Ok, just in case introductions are in order: Faust is the classic Krautrock band from the '70s who resurrected themselves in the '90s, demonstrating that they still knew a thing or two about making weird and avant-garde psychedelic rock music. Dalek, meanwhile, is a genre defying, indie-rock-scene-crashing rapper from New York whose album on Ipecac two years back was a big hit 'round these parts and elsewhere. The Dalek / Faust connection first became public when a Dalek cut was included on Faust's Klangbad: First Steps compilation. We then heard rumors that the two were gonna do something together...at last, here is the fruit of that unholy union! Krautrock and rap, that's a first I guess. (Krautrap? ugh.) But it makes sense in light of Dalek's allegiance to dub and electronica and Faust's interest in the same... So, how did this collab turn out? Sounds more like a Dalek record than a Faust one overall. Dark, scary soundscapes stretch out over the first track -- percussive miasma, somewhere in there latter-day Faust guitarist Stephen Wray Lobdell (Davis Redford Triad) generating clouds of blue-black -- before Dalek starts dropping rhymes on track two, "Hungry For Now". Beats ricochet dangerously as Dalek does the urban griot routine over the grinding of the Faust factory. It's kinda in the same illbient, claustrophobic dub-sphere as Spectre and the WordSound crew, or Techno-Animal, with whom Dalek previously has worked. Faust are certainly capable of generating some heavy duty darkness -- as they have gotten older, they seem to have delved more into the Industrial-Ambient sounds their old albums perhaps presaged. You'll find no references to the surreal pop element of Faust's '70s sound here, just some hardcore hip hop in a nightmare void.
MPEG Stream: "Hungry For Now"
MPEG Stream: "Dead Lies"

FEHLMANN, THOMAS Honigpumpe (Kompakt) cd 15.98
One of the strongest forces and brightest minds in the German electronic scene of the last few decades, Thomas Fehlman has always had two different and distinct musical sides. There is his love of Detroit born raw hard techno, and then there is his endless fascination with more spaced out and ambient sounds influenced by the likes of Fripp, Eno and Tangerine Dream. Honigpumpe is for sure a result of the latter. Dreamy and blissed out electronica with beats that aren't as much for the dancefloor as they are for the living room or the couch or the bed. We've been putting this on every time we have to do unglamorous tasks like laundry and the dishes and with this on time seems to move a little faster and so do we. As a full fledged member of The Orb and his constant producing and live dj sets, Fehlmann shows no signs of slowing down and that's a very good thing. We want more!
MPEG Stream: "I.R.N.I.I.Z."
MPEG Stream: "Stralensatz"

FELIX DA HOUSECAT Kittenz And Thee Glam (Emperor Norton) cd 16.98
Now available domestically with new artwork via Los Angeles based Emperor Norton: the long awaited debut long player from Chicago DJ / remixer extraordinaire Felix Stallings aka Felix Da Housecat. "Kittenz And Thee Glitz" shuffles through a hearty mix of electro, techno and house. Unfortunately for Stallings, the recent bandwagoneering of new electro outfits gives little credibility to this dance music veteran's inclusion of said genre. Decent stuff overall, not outstanding - it is *dance* music after all, nothing more. Still, more arty and interesting than the standard techno / house fare, yet more mainstream than the Kompakt / BPitch / WMF / Shitkatapult techno sound. Features the dancefloor smash "Silver Screen Shower Scene".
RealAudio clip: "Happy Hour"
RealAudio clip: "Silver Screen Shower Scene"

FENNESZ Black Sea (Touch) cd 15.98
Which came first Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz? If one is to merely look at the discographies of the twin kings of digitally tricked out guitar sculpting, the chronological answer is obvious: Christian Fennesz. But in the four years that have transpired between his brilliant album Venice and the 2008 opus Black Sea, Fennesz must have seen a younger protege in Tim Hecker coming up in the rear view mirror with his own dramatic sound for smeared guitar whose beauty is similarly rendered through error. Not only does Black Sea feel like a response to Tim Hecker's work, it also stands as Fennesz' most fully realized album, perhaps even more so than the sunburst explosion of meta-pop on Endless Summer.
Fennesz works best in the cold, with ice, snow, and frost dusting the strings of his guitar and seeping into the circuitry of his computer; and the cold landscape is exactly where he situates himself on Black Sea. Not surprisingly, Touch's Jon Wozencroft perfectly matches a photograph of an abandoned train track set onto a barren wintry landscape, looking a hell of lot like the photographs that Anselm Keifer uses as a background over which he dumps tar, paint, cement, lead, ash, and whatnot into his alchemical paintings.
Black Sea opens with the fizzling crunch of digital errata getting mangled even further by digital means, with Fennesz sculpting a sea swell of a half melody in the distance. Considering the contemplative and cold nature of the rest of the album, this track is a bit discordant; but Fennesz isn't going for the Menche / Merzbow attack, just something of a wake-up call. But gradually, even this first burst of noise quells in a plaintive round of finger picking on the guitar, out of which a beautiful cloud of vaporized drone begins to amass and a subharmonic throb of distortion settles in. These sounds become the template for the rest of the album, all wrapped in gray, muted timbres. When noise bursts through Fennesz' circuits, the attack almost immediately blurs into clustered loops, drones, and sympathetic noises to smooth the edges into a shimmered glisten of remarkable beauty that exhibits a cold, overcast, and gray soundsmear, certainly on par with the sleepytime shoegaze of My Bloody Valentine. After an exceptional collaborative track with Rosy Parlane of lunar landscape ambience riddled with dust before opening into a hymnal melody, Black Sea comes to an end with one of Fennesz' best tracks ever in "Saffron Revolution," with its soaring vapor trail of tone-bent guitar drone and a majestic crescendo of sustained, soft focus distortion. A truly marvellous piece of work.
MPEG Stream: "Black Sea"
MPEG Stream: "Glide"
MPEG Stream: "Saffron Revolution"

FENNESZ Black Sea (Touch) lp 16.98
Now available on vinyl, this recent Record Of The Week!
Which came first Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz? If one is to merely look at the discographies of the twin kings of digitally tricked out guitar sculpting, the chronological answer is obvious: Christian Fennesz. But in the four years that have transpired between his brilliant album Venice and the 2008 opus Black Sea, Fennesz must have seen a younger protege in Tim Hecker coming up in the rear view mirror with his own dramatic sound for smeared guitar whose beauty is similarly rendered through error. Not only does Black Sea feel like a response to Tim Hecker's work, it also stands as Fennesz' most fully realized album, perhaps even more so than the sunburst explosion of meta-pop on Endless Summer.
Fennesz works best in the cold, with ice, snow, and frost dusting the strings of his guitar and seeping into the circuitry of his computer; and the cold landscape is exactly where he situates himself on Black Sea. Not surprisingly, Touch's Jon Wozencroft perfectly matches a photograph of an abandoned train track set onto a barren wintry landscape, looking a hell of lot like the photographs that Anselm Keifer uses as a background over which he dumps tar, paint, cement, lead, ash, and whatnot into his alchemical paintings.
Black Sea opens with the fizzling crunch of digital errata getting mangled even further by digital means, with Fennesz sculpting a sea swell of a half melody in the distance. Considering the contemplative and cold nature of the rest of the album, this track is a bit discordant; but Fennesz isn't going for the Menche / Merzbow attack, just something of a wake-up call. But gradually, even this first burst of noise quells in a plaintive round of finger picking on the guitar, out of which a beautiful cloud of vaporized drone begins to amass and a subharmonic throb of distortion settles in. These sounds become the template for the rest of the album, all wrapped in gray, muted timbres. When noise bursts through Fennesz' circuits, the attack almost immediately blurs into clustered loops, drones, and sympathetic noises to smooth the edges into a shimmered glisten of remarkable beauty that exhibits a cold, overcast, and gray soundsmear, certainly on par with the sleepytime shoegaze of My Bloody Valentine. After an exceptional collaborative track with Rosy Parlane of lunar landscape ambience riddled with dust before opening into a hymnal melody, Black Sea comes to an end with one of Fennesz' best tracks ever in "Saffron Revolution," with its soaring vapor trail of tone-bent guitar drone and a majestic crescendo of sustained, soft focus distortion. A truly marvellous piece of work.
MPEG Stream: "Black Sea"
MPEG Stream: "Glide"
MPEG Stream: "Saffron Revolution"

FENNESZ Endless Summer (Editions Mego) cd 16.98
Way back in the summer of 2001, we made Fennesz' Endless Summer a Record of the Week. Little did we know how influential the album would become, and how much of an impact it would have on the realms of the avant-garde and electronic music at large. Here's what we said with the linguistic aplomb of an era now past:
While the label that Fennesz calls home is certainly guilty of propagating a specific aesthetic (harsh digital soundscapes based upon the flotsam of cybernetic errata), Fennesz has always produced what we had imagined should be the salvation for experimental electronica -- an ever vigilant, but necessarily shifting search for balance. As Fennesz does incorporate the guitar quite a bit into his creative process, there is a finely tuned balance between rock and electronica archetypes. However, his egalitarian views of intention and execution, dissonance and melody, metaphor and metonym, structure and arrhythmia, analogue and digital, warm and cool, etc. are exactly what electronica needs.
Fennesz' third album -- the aptly titled Endless Summer -- picks up where his ep of Rolling Stones / Beach Boys covers left off with a digital dispersion of "fun in the sun" rock mythologies. While there are no obviously discernible pop culture references, Fennesz builds a sound that really is quite summery from odd duets between disintegrating acoustic guitar strums and the coalescence of digital errata. Thus, this album has the feeling of the classic Beach Boys sound, but very little of that structure. These are NOT Beach Boys covers; but if he said they were, we'd have no basis to call him a liar. Regardless, Fennesz's Endless Summer is a stunning record.
Repackaged with vastly improved artwork, and two extra tracks not on the original. One of which was from the Fat Cat split series of 12"s and the other being unreleased.
MPEG Stream: "Endless Summer"
MPEG Stream: "Happy Audio"

FENNESZ Field Recordings 1995:2002 (Touch) cd 15.98
Over the past couple of years, it has become apparent that there are two modes of production for the esteemed Austrian electro-glitch artist Christian Fennesz. On one hand, there are the studio driven productions where he focuses on the digital decomposition of various guitar signatures (exemplified within the "Plays" single whose beautiful cover of The Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black" was originally commissioned for the ill-fated "Painted Black" compilation -- due soon on tUMULt), and on the other, there's the live improvisation techniques he brings to any number of European free-jazz / new music ensembles (i.e. MIMEO, FennO'Berg, Polweschel, Golden Tone, Orchestra 33 1/3, etc.). While his technical prowess and expressive immediacy can be quite graceful on those electro-improv recordings, Fennesz excels in the studio.
"Field Recordings 1995:2002" -- which is NOT a collection of Chris Watson-esque field recordings -- picks up some of the studio driven scraps that had been released on compilations, special projects, and film soundtracks during the past 7 years. Of particular note, "Field Recordings 1995:2002" features all of the cuts from his amazing "Instrument" debut EP released on Mego in 1995. Even before such incredibly powerful programs as SuperCollider and Max/MSP had been as widely available as they are now, Fennesz has always been interested the atomization and disintegration of digital recordings at their most basic level. While all of these tracks from "Instrument" still sound great by today's standards, there is a strong connection with the sampledelica guitar trickery of '90s UK post-rock of Seefeel, Main, and Disco Inferno as hyperactive, time-stretched kaleidoscopes of post-MBV distortion and skittering electronica rhythms. The other tracks include reworkings of the soundtrack composed for "Blue Moon," remixes Fennesz did for Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephan Mathieu, and compilation tracks from "Decay" (Ash International), "RKKCD13" (Reckankreuzungklankewerkzeuge), "Clicks and Cuts 2" (Mille Plateaux) and "Krev X" (Ash International) -- that last contribution being a digitally fuzzed-out cover of America's "A Horse With No Name."
While many 'loose-end' collections run the risk of being full of cast-away tracks from the proper albums, Fennesz' "Field Recording" is as good as any of his previous albums, and shouldn't be missed!
RealAudio clip: "Instrument 3"
RealAudio clip: "Instrument 4"
RealAudio clip: "Surf"
RealAudio clip: "Name With No Horse"

FENNESZ Hotel Parallel (Mego) cd 16.98
Originally released in 1997, now finally available again, the debut full length from Viennese experimentalist guitarist Christian Fennesz. Long before the fuzzed out blurry sounds of folks like Tim Hecker and other DIY dronesters were everywhere, and the technology for processing sound was super readily available, Fennesz was a laptop alchemist, a guitar deconstructionist, transforming his axe into a strange sound making device, capable or producing the most gorgeous and alien of sounds.
Hotel Parallel is a lot different than later Fennesz releases. Where those were soft focus and sun baked, glistening and shimmering, Hotel Parallel is much darker, more abrasive, harder edged, the sounds much more intense and brutal, but without losing any of their beautiful mystery. 
Listening to this again now, it's kind of mind blowing to believe the sounds here are all guitar. From dense swirls of speaker clogging hiss, to glimmering Niblockian stretches of static high end blur, to tangled swirls of glitch and swoop, backwards fffffft and gnarled melody, to grinding low end chunks of sound, angular and abrasive, to barely there billows of whispery low end, streaked with muted melody, to epic My Bloody Valentine like cacophonies of distorted pop ambient almost house music to super minimal Chain Reaction throb and pulse. Some of these tracks sound like the recent Field record, or some of the more abstract Kompakt stuff, but this was 10 YEARS AGO! AND IS ALL GUITAR! How the fuck do all of these sounds come out of a guitar? Who the hell cares? An absolutely gorgeous breathtaking epochal work of guitar experimentation, that few have rivaled in the decade since...
This reissue is super swank, six panel digipak, printed in green on white with subtle spot varnish, it includes some extra stuff too, a bonus track from a long out of print 7" (limited to 100 copies) from 1996, a super beautiful droney blurry murkscape, and an absolutely breathtaking video, perfectly reflecting the sound of Fennesz visually, all glitchy and grainy and so gorgeous...
MPEG Stream: "Sz"
MPEG Stream: "Nebenraum"
MPEG Stream: "Blok M"

FENNESZ Il Libro Mio (TanzHotel) 3" cd 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
4 short compositions on an adorable little 3" compact disc by this brilliant electronica / guitarist from Vienna. Shards of processed guitar noise filtered into the tropes of musique concrete that end up sounding like a more active Achim Wollschied. Further on the composition, Fennesz allows the delicate strum of the guitar to infiltrate the barrage of noise, giving nods to John Fahey, but in a much more interesting way than the recent interpretations of Fahey by the Chicago post-rockers.

FENNESZ Live At Revolver, Melbourne (Touch) cd 11.98
Austrian electronic glitch-guitar superstar Christian Fennesz does his thing in Australia, and this live limited edition cd (not cd-r, unlike other similarly plainly-packaged releases on Touch) is the documentation. "Live at Revolver" picks up where Fennesz' masterful "+47° 56' 37"" left off with rich buzzing tonalities forming melancholic almost-melodies topped with sporadic events of domestic clatter. A requiem for a microwave oven, perhaps? Nonetheless this may be for fans only, as it's not quite 17 minutes long! Still, this is recommended, as those 16 minutes and 34 seconds are quite good.

FENNESZ Live In Japan (Headz) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Live record from everybody's favorite laptopping guitarist (or guitar playing laptopper) Christian Fennesz, released on the new (to us at least) Japanese label Headz, in a gorgeous sleeve designed by Touch's Jon Wozencroft. A little over 40 minutes of gorgeous, squelching, hazy shimmer. The disc starts off with a burst of scratchy barbed wire static, before the submerged melodies and summery warmth slowly rise to the surface. As the disc progresses Fennesz's guitar surfaces more and more, as lazily strummed acoustic guitars dodge digital crunch, and fingerpicked notes are captured and sent careening wildly through the thick wash of digital whir, crackly sputter, and gritty fuzz. Moments of melodic tranquility bob weightlessly on a sea of crackling glitches and resonant flickers of crumbling distortion, as the melodies struggle to stay afloat. So completely lovely and at the same time so ferocious and harsh, a dichotomy of sound that seems to define the glorious sonic explorations of Fennesz.
MPEG Stream: "Live In Japan"

FENNESZ Live In Japan (Autofact) lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Previously released only as a pricey and now out of print Japanese import cd, this is now available on vinyl, with new artwork, pressed on thick vinyl and packaged in nice thick sleeves! We only got a handful and most likely will NOT be able to get more once these are gone. Here's what we had to say about cd when we first got it in:
Live record from everybody's favorite laptopping guitarist (or guitar playing laptopper) Christian Fennesz. A little over 40 minutes of gorgeous, squelching, hazy shimmer. The record starts off with a burst of scratchy barbed wire static, before the submerged melodies and summery warmth slowly rise to the surface. As the record progresses Fennesz's guitar surfaces more and more, as lazily strummed acoustic guitars dodge digital crunch, and fingerpicked notes are captured and sent careening wildly through the thick wash of digital whir, crackly sputter, and gritty fuzz. Moments of melodic tranquility bob weightlessly on a sea of crackling glitches and resonant flickers of crumbling distortion, as the melodies struggle to stay afloat. So completely lovely and at the same time so ferocious and harsh, a dichotomy of sound that seems to define the glorious sonic explorations of Fennesz.
MPEG Stream: "Live In Japan"

FENNESZ Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56' 37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51' 08" (Touch) cd 16.98
Strange that we've never written anything about this album, the second album from Vienna's guitar 'n' laptop rock star Christian Fennesz. Originally released on Mego back in 1999, this album has gone through several pressings, fortunately always preserving the same core tracklisting, although the art has shrunk down to a digipack for the 2008 edition on Touch. The two albums that came after this album - Endless Summer and Venice - may stand as his perfect albums, one obviously summery and the other decidedly wintery; if anything, this is his shoegaze record, as he deftly wrangles with hurricane-strength distortion and tempers that with a post-MBV blur of narcotic auditory bliss. Throughout, Fennesz merely alludes to melody buried beneath all of the fuzzy drones and tempestuous noise, with pixel pointed interludes indicative of the signature Mego inflorescence for digital errata that he and Pita helped define. This is clearly the album that was the major inspiration for Tim Hecker and his digiscapes of guitar drones and 8-bit noise; but this album also bridges back to earlier pioneers of electronic adventurousness such as Main (especially Motion Pool) and The Hafler Trio (like Intoutof). If you've not checked this out, there's no better time than the present.
MPEG Stream: "010"
MPEG Stream: "013"
MPEG Stream: "014"

FENNESZ Transition (Touch) 7" 8.98
The master returns. To teach the young ones a thing or two about the guitar. And about turning that guitar into something wholly other.
It's been a while since we've heard from Christian Fennesz, but thankfully, very little has changed, he can still take a guitar and a laptop and create a dense world of dreamlike shimmer, with a deftness that puts most other soundmakers to shame. So here's a brief two song taste of what Fennesz has been up to lately. And if this single is any indication, the upcoming full length is going to be the drone-y dreamy disc of the year!
But for now, we'll take these two, and just play them over and over. The A side finds the guitar completely transformed into muted smears, the overall sound a shifting sea of corrosive crumbling distortion, but rendered in breathless whispers and washed out hues. The metallic thrum is spread out into soft shimmers, a murk that would almost sound industrial if it wasn't so pretty.
The flipside is more guitar oriented, a steel string acoustic, the melodies branching out in simple softly strummed strands, a skeletal framework for swirls of soft hiss and chunks of fragmented melody drifting by like leaves on a forest stream. The sound is like some simple folk music, broadcast via a staticky short wave radio, but beneath the guitar, and the dreamy hiss, are lush, stately swells melodic and cinematic, that infuse the track with a dark, but sweetly sorrowful elegiac quality. Gorgeous.

FENNESZ / ROSY PARLANE Live (Mego) cd3 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Mego has been really getting into these cute litte 3" cds... They have a similar fetish object quality as the ultra limited and therefore highly collectible Drone Records series, but for the more digitally minded. This collaborative release between Rosy Parlane (former partner with Dean Roberts in Thela) and the swashbuckling Christian Fennesz is a fluid stream of digital pops and timestretched glitches. At first their duet fades from the glitch worship towards something resembling fragments of an Arvo Part vocal chorale, but returns to the rhythmic hard disc edits recalling Oval's "Systemische."

FENNESZ, O'ROURKE, REHBERG Magic Sound Of Fenn o' Berg (Mego) cd 16.98
With just the mention of Jim O'Rourke, this will sell itself. But for those of you out there who have been taken in by his recent pop aesthetics, we should state the warning that this is not a pop album. Collaborating with powerbook geniuses Christian Fennesz and Pita Rehberg (both from the venerable Mego collective), O'Rourke sheds the pop schtick for a streaming barrage of digital splices which are predominantly needling synthetic tones and random clicks, but sporadically reference a rhythm or a melody before being mutilated into the digital cacophony.

FENNESZ, O'ROURKE, REHBERG Return of Fenn O' Berg (Mego) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The second production from the Fenn O' Berg laptop trio of Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke, and Peter "Pita" Rehberg adds just a bit more structure to the previous collaboration, but falls in line with the increasing number of Max / MSP improvisations that have been coming out as of late. The general feel for the album retains some of the digitally deconstructed dreaminess found on some of the Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers recordings, but with the additional collaged pitter patter of digital squiggles and clicks. Where Fenn O'Berg succeeds is in their sporadic use of fuzzy rhythms, post-acid melodies, and antiquated samples from carnival music and melodramatic film scores. All of these, of course, get the pixel treatment.
RealAudio clip: "Floating My Boat"
RealAudio clip: "A Viennese Tragedy"

FERENC Cronch (Kompakt) 12" 10.98

FERENC Fraximal (Kompakt) cd 15.98

MPEG Stream: "Diplodocus"
MPEG Stream: "Sandia"

FETISH 69 Dysfunctions and Drones (Trost) 2cd 26.00
Fetish 69. The name says everything, right? Well, perhaps not on this double CD of remixes and collaborations. With a name as bad as Fetish 69 (implying some horrid diva-house disaster or worse a My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult sex-horror-shock industrial parody), it's quite a relief to discover the deep dub electronics of Austria's Fetish 69 sound almost exactly like Scorn -- right down to the big rolling basslines, isolationist atmospheres, and slinky trip hop beats. On this double CD, the first chapter ("Dysfunctions") is comprised of the more beat oriented material (with contributions / remix work from James Plotkin, Spectre, Scorn's Mick Harris, Toxic Lounge, etc.) The second CD ("Drones") isn't so much drones (like Hazard or Andrew Chalk) as it is sort of downtempo noir sound not unlike Barry Adamson, with Tribes of Neurot, Fritz Ostyermayer, and Krupica contributing. Pita adds the most notable and intriguing exception to the set with a digitally obliterated remix of the original, that really has nothing to do with what Fetish 69 sounds like (or what they used to sound like, 'cause when we first encountered this band back in the early '90s they were a metallic/industrial noise-rock outfit responsible for a few fairly heavy and now deleted cds on the Nuclear Blast label, so it was quite a surprise to find them still active, and with such friends).

FEVER Too Bad But True (DHR) cd 12.98
Andee's favourite hip hop record of 1998, which originally came out on Alec Empire's Digital Hardcore label in Germany, has been released here in the States at domestic prices!
After a year of disappointment from big name hip hoppers (RZA, Method Man), DHR surprises us all with what may be the weirdest and best hip hop record of the year. Deep, dark, and disturbingly distorted. Murky, monotone, and menacing. Sort of like Sensational and Alec Empire having a fist fight in a dark alley!

FEVER Too Bad But True (DHR) lp 11.98
Andee's favourite hip hop record of 1998, which originally came out on Alec Empire's Digital Hardcore label in Germany, has been released here in the States at domestic prices!
After a year of disappointment from big name hip hoppers (RZA, Method Man), DHR surprises us all with what may be the weirdest and best hip hop record of the year. Deep, dark, and disturbingly distorted. Murky, monotone, and menacing. Sort of like Sensational and Alec Empire having a fist fight in a dark alley!

FIELD, THE From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt) cd 15.98
What's release without tension? What if there's no real release, just an ongoing tension? Like you are hovering over a brink of a precipice but somehow knowing you are not going to fall and die you really get into the powerful momentum of floating fixed in space between the universal expanse above and the bottomless nothing below. That is how The Field (aka Axel Wilner) fashions his tightly edited minimal trance compositions on his Kompakt debut, From Here We Go Sublime. Like the best Kompact releases, from The Pop Ambient series to Wolfgang Voigt's Gas albums, The Field make the most out of nothing much at all. But what incredible nothings! The evolving repetitions of finely honed razor-sharp edits off of bits of samples, such as the vowel sounds of words, belied by rudimentary drum programming only occasionally reveal their source, including a bit of Lionel Ritchie's "Hello" and The Flamingo's "I Only Have Eyes For You", more famously sampled by The Fugees. Dare we say it, This is sublime!
MPEG Stream: "Sun & Ice"
MPEG Stream: "Over The Ice"
MPEG Stream: "The Deal"

FIELD, THE From Here We Go Sublime (12") (Kompakt) 12" 11.98

FIELD, THE Sun & Ice (Kompakt) 12" 9.98

FIELD, THE Things Keep Falling Down (Kompakt) 12" 9.98

FIELD, THE Yesterday And Today (Anti / Kompakt) cd 15.98
The Field's 2007 album From Here We Go Sublime caught many people by surprise, and we were happy to find ourselves included in that crowd of Field supporters. This was a minimal techno record playing the part of a pop album, through sleights of hand that extracted the sappiest moments of the '80s without appearing the part of the ironist. In pixel-painted blurs of entrancing melodies and soothing ambient warmth, The Field offered nostalgia without having a damn Lionel Richie song stuck in your head. Yup, one of the more memorable samples from From Here We Go Sublime was a wistful guitar lead from Richie's "Hello." In a lot of ways, The Field reached a pinnacle for Kompakt's Pop Ambient strategies, easily surpassing perhaps the album that started it all: Gas' Pop.
Jump two years down the line and several trips around the world, The Field returns with a second album that shouldn't disappoint those who were held rapt by the debut. Yesterday and Today has much of the restrained crescendos of velvety hypnosis grafted onto the steel girds of German engineered techno. Yes, we do know that The Field's Axel Willner is from Sweden, but the heart and soul of the motorik pulse is firmly rooted in Germany. Neu!, Kraftwerk, Cluster, Basic Channel, and of course, Kompakt are the obvious references in the formal structures of The Field, with his source material being those misty-eyed remembrances of music's past. If there are specific samples to be recognized in Yesterday and Today, they are not overt and obvious; but the sentiment is still the same. Nice.
The vinyl version includes a cd of the album as well!
MPEG Stream: "Leave It"
MPEG Stream: "I Have The Moon, You Have The Internet"
MPEG Stream: "Yesterday & Today"

FIELD, THE Yesterday And Today (Anti / Kompakt) 2lp+cd 19.98
The Field's 2007 album From Here We Go Sublime caught many people by surprise, and we were happy to find ourselves included in that crowd of Field supporters. This was a minimal techno record playing the part of a pop album, through sleights of hand that extracted the sappiest moments of the '80s without appearing the part of the ironist. In pixel-painted blurs of entrancing melodies and soothing ambient warmth, The Field offered nostalgia without having a damn Lionel Richie song stuck in your head. Yup, one of the more memorable samples from From Here We Go Sublime was a wistful guitar lead from Richie's "Hello." In a lot of ways, The Field reached a pinnacle for Kompakt's Pop Ambient strategies, easily surpassing perhaps the album that started it all: Gas' Pop.
Jump two years down the line and several trips around the world, The Field returns with a second album that shouldn't disappoint those who were held rapt by the debut. Yesterday and Today has much of the restrained crescendos of velvety hypnosis grafted onto the steel girds of German engineered techno. Yes, we do know that The Field's Axel Willner is from Sweden, but the heart and soul of the motorik pulse is firmly rooted in Germany. Neu!, Kraftwerk, Cluster, Basic Channel, and of course, Kompakt are the obvious references in the formal structures of The Field, with his source material being those misty-eyed remembrances of music's past. If there are specific samples to be recognized in Yesterday and Today, they are not overt and obvious; but the sentiment is still the same. Nice.
The vinyl version includes a cd of the album as well!
MPEG Stream: "Leave It"
MPEG Stream: "I Have The Moon, You Have The Internet"
MPEG Stream: "Yesterday & Today"

FIGURINE The Heartfelt (Monika) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is the second full length release by this amazing trio which features a member of Dntel. Some of the sweetest electronic dance melodies are found right here on 'The Heartfelt'. Imagine the Pastels, Aphex Twin, New Order and Future Bible Heroes (the hi-energy disco side project of Magnetic Fields Stephin Merritt) having a slumber party. Hints of 80's synth pop merge and mingle with early rave or current experimental electronics. There are lovely new wave heart-wrenching vocals, with perfect, sweet boy/girl harmonies. It's no surprise that this gets the thumbs up from AQ friend Owen Ashworth of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone.
RealAudio clip: "Impossible"
RealAudio clip: "Stranger"
RealAudio clip: "Way Too Good"

FIGURINE, JAMES Mistake Mistake Mistake Mistake (Plug Research) cd 14.98
While many techno-pop / electro-clash folks have recently shed many of the trappings of that deliriously champagne-bubbly dancefloor sound in favor of other directions (more rock in the case of Fischerspooner for instance), not so with James Figurine. Yes, he's of the band Figurine and yes, he's also known as Jimmy Tamborello of DNTEL and one half of Postal Service. Why mess with what he does best in all of his projects? He soldiers on with his new album titled Mistake Mistake Mistake Mistake. Funny thing tho' is that we can't hear any. So maybe the title was intended as a conjuring away of such maladies? Dunno, but what ya get is ten sparkling sweet electronic pop confections that fall dead center between Postal Service and Fischerspooner (think: more heft than PS and more twee than FS). Guest stars include Jenny Lewis and Kings Of Convenience's Erlend Oye.
MPEG Stream: "555666888333"
MPEG Stream: "You Again"

FILA BRAZILLIA Another Late Night (Azuli) cd 24.00
Expensive import disc that we brought in because we're unsure whether or not it's going to be released domestically. Kind of like Studio k7's DJ Kicks series of DJ mixes, it's not Fila Brazillia at all here, but them spinning a collection of their favorite records, what they call "late night music" made for getting stoned to and probably having stylish sex. Some of the tracks included here are by the Beta Band, John Barry, Eno, Kelis, and Infesticons. But while the DJ Kicks series of discs (by the likes of Andrea Parker, Kid Loco, etc) displayed a lot of DJ personality in the way they're mixed, this disc sounds like a merely linear succession of tracks with little or no DJ creativity added to the mix. Not sure how much work was output on Fila Brazillia's part here, but I suppose it is a decent collection. Nonetheless I have to ask -- what's the point? I've made better mixtapes than this and so have you.

FINAL 2 (Sentrax) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Forbidding ambient-drone project from Godflesh's Justin Broadrick. British import.

FISCHERSPOONER #1 (Gigolo Records) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. ORDER THE OTHER VERSION (on Ministry of SOund) INSTEAD.
If Adult. scored "Hedwig And The Angry Inch" or... if the cast from Fame played electro. Glammy and slick with many cool parts and sounds but unfortunately weak arrangements undermine Fischerspooner's drive for #1. And well, I really could do without the diva singer too. The second track on the album is a cover of Wire's "The 15th", and quite a great version it is, but it's also kinda questionable that they'd put a cover so early in the proceedings. Really, couldn't they come up with a suitable track of their own?
RealAudio clip: "The 15th"
RealAudio clip: "Fucker"
RealAudio clip: "Horizon"

FISCHERSPOONER #1 (Ministry Of Sound) cd 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT -- GET THE DOMESTIC VERSION NOW OUT.
We had this album before, but it has been sadly temporarily out of print for some time. In the time between the album's initial release and this expensive import reissue some of us have grown quite fond of Fischerspooner, maybe even against our better judgement. If there's one thing that Fischerspooner excels in the most, it's self-promotion -- their disc's artwork consists primarily of fawning praise from the press (even adorning the inside tray, as if you might need some positive reinforcement after you've purchased it). I suppose they feel the need to stand out in the ever increasing throngs of retro-electro rock bands. Which is too bad, because as a band they're heads above the pack. Think Depeche Mode with gargantuan cojones and you're beginning to get the picture. On top of having mastered the aesthetics of the neo-electro genre, Fischerspooner are also consummate writers of pop gems. The third track "Emerge" has all the workings of a teeth gnashing dancefloor hit with its ever increasing tension and intensity topped by a delicious hook that appeals to the most base pop sensibility. If that's not enough, they've managed to pull off a cover of Wire's "The 15th" that's so fucking great some here would argue that it betters the original. Once you get over the fashionable performance / conceptual art pretensions of Fischerspooner, you'll find their music hard to resist. As a bonus consolation to this expensive reissue you get three new bonus tracks and some exclusive video footage.
RealAudio clip: "Emerge"
RealAudio clip: "The 15th"
RealAudio clip: "Natural Disaster"

FISCHERSPOONER #1 (Capitol) 2cd 16.98
BACK IN PRINT FOR THE THIRD TIME!!! Domestic and cheaper now too!
If there's one thing that Fischerspooner excels in the most, it's self-promotion -- their disc's artwork consists primarily of fawning praise from the press (even adorning the inside tray, as if you might need some positive reinforcement after you've purchased it). I suppose they feel the need to stand out in the ever increasing throngs of retro-electro rock bands. Which is too bad, because as a band they're heads above the pack. Think Depeche Mode with gargantuan cojones and you're beginning to get the picture. On top of having mastered the aesthetics of the neo-electro genre, Fischerspooner are also consummate writers of pop gems. The third track "Emerge" has all the workings of a teeth gnashing dancefloor hit with its ever increasing tension and intensity topped by a delicious hook that appeals to the most base pop sensibility. If that's not enough, they've managed to pull off a cover of Wire's "The 15th" that's so fucking great some here would argue that it betters the original. Once you get over the fashionable performance / conceptual art pretensions of Fischerspooner, you'll find their music hard to resist. As a bonus consolation, you also get a DVD with videos, exclusive remixes, show history, and photos with this new edition.
RealAudio clip: "Emerge"
RealAudio clip: "The 15th"
RealAudio clip: "Natural Disaster"

FISCHERSPOONER #1 (Gigolo Records) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. ORDER THE OTHER VERSION (on Ministry of SOund) INSTEAD.
If Adult. scored "Hedwig And The Angry Inch" or... if the cast from Fame played electro. Glammy and slick with many cool parts and sounds but unfortunately weak arrangements undermine Fischerspooner's drive for #1. And well, I really could do without the diva singer too. The second track on the album is a cover of Wire's "The 15th", and quite a great version it is, but it's also kinda questionable that they'd put a cover so early in the proceedings. Really, couldn't they come up with a suitable track of their own?

FISCHERSPOONER Odyssey (Capitol) cd 13.98
Odyssey... the new eau de parfum... er, eau d'album from the fashion house of Fischerspooner. They've revamped their formula since their audacious debut -- holding onto those tried and true arpeggiated basslines and rocking things up with electric guitar, live drumming and... flute! They've apparently even given the diva singer the boot, drawing the spotlight more to Casey Spooner's vocals which come across as much more sing-song-y and sensitive guy (think: a more 'pumped' Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys), but please excuse us for being more than a little wary of their sincerity and substance when the group's career thus far has been unabashedly fabricated from truckloads of gloss, glitter and gall. This time when soliciting contributions the unapologetically shrewd and calculating duo shunned the fading electro-clash fashionistas and approached the likes of Susan Sontag, Linda Perry and David Byrne for assistance. Plus here's a head-scratcher for ya: they close the album with a cover of a Boredoms song -- a strange, truncated but oddly effective synthesized transformation of "Circle" from Vision Creation Newsun! There's two bonus tracks: one is a remix of "Just Let Go" and the second is an incongruous swirly pop song sung by Lizzy Yoder. Hmm, dare we guess that they're testing that genre's waters for a potential next new direction? Something to consider 'cuz it just might be the best song on the album. Sure had us scratching our heads a second time, goin' wtf!? though.
MPEG Stream: "Get Confused"
MPEG Stream: "Down Up"

FISCHERSPOONER (V/A) The Other Side New York (Time Out) dualdisc 17.98
Here's a novel concept... Why not let Fischerspooner be your tourguide to gettin' around New York City? Those obsessive who-what-where-when mavens at Time Out (makers of those hip city guides that are usually found in magazine and book form) thought it a dandy idea, and have issued a series of three travel guide dualdisc (cd one side, dvd on the other) sets compiled by select taste-makin' startlets from London (Damian Lazarus), Paris (Black Strobe) and New York (Fischerspooner).
The eclectic musical selections are a funfilled romp although they're oddly not limited to New York based artists -- Bloc Party, Fiery Furnaces, Au Pairs, Princess Superstar, Broadcast, David Carretta, Plastique De Reve, Big Boys, Lassigue Bendthaus, Electronicat, Thomas Schumacher, Model 500, Richard Bartz, Martin Rev, Pixeltan and Laurie Anderson. Of course, shrewd businessmen that they are, they also include one of their own in the mix -- a remix of "Emerge".
The dvd side of The Other Side is hosted by Casey Spooner and offers a glimpse of his choice picks around the Big Apple.
MPEG Stream: LASSIGUE BENDTHAUS "Jealous Guy"
MPEG Stream: PLASTIQUE DE REVE "Rodeo Mechanique"

FISHEROFGOLD In My Vessel (Quatermass) cd 15.98
Here's the debut full-length release from this Irish electronica artist, who you may already know from his appearance on Quatermass' recent "Personal Settings" cd alongside Pan American and Komet. Fisherofgold follows the currently cool electronic/experimental template of recording everyday sounds ("...street scenes, industrial sites, squeaky shopping trolleys, the sound of the universe flying through his window nearby the 'vessel'" -- to quote his press sheet. Yes, that's what it says!) via minidisc, then treating these sounds in (presumably) his laptop computer (the press sheet again: "In the lab, all sounds subjected to secret processes, both analog/digital, ripped and torn and left out to dry, stretched and scraped..."). The results are a pleasantly droney, abstract soundscape of glitchy loops, insectoid hum and the like, with some IDM breakbeat science (nothing too dancefloor oriented though) -- in other words, something no worse than the last disc you bought in the clicks n' cuts genre. But, again to return to the absurdly pretentious prose of Fisherofgold's press release, "Tunes grow like coral, a new breath is given to environmental sounds and life. No master plan, just following the path. Doing THE WORK and watching... Waiting to see what appears in this vessel." Good grief. Basically you recorded some sounds outside your house, fucked with them in your computer, and made some "tunes". Nice but hardly THE WORK, eh? But, to judge "In My Vessel" on its musical merits, it's as we said, quite fine for the genre. But how many of these sorts of records do you need to own? (And how many do we need to review?) Your call.
RealAudio clip: "Weltschmerz"
RealAudio clip: "Ballad Of Nothing Important"