FIIUM SHAARK – We Are Astonishingly Lifelike
Not Applicable: NOT036
Rudi Fischerlehner: drums: Maurizio Ravalico: percussion; Isambard Khroustaliov: electronics
Recorded: 2013-2015, London, Aarhus, Berlin.
The title of this CD is taken from a piece by American artist’s Barbara Kruger’s lenticular photograph – which is titled ‘Untitled (Help! I am locked inside this picture / We are astonishingly lifelike)’, and is well worth looking at prior to listening to the tracks here. The opening track, ‘Conundrums’, begins with an insistent but almost subliminal electronic buzz over a solid but backgrounded drum and percussion track. This is an audio equivalent of Kruger’s photograph, in that the listener realises that there is something here which requires attention but the overlaying of sounds means that it is not at all obvious which aspects are significant. The idea of a trio of electronics, percussion and drums might, at first, challenge any preconceptions of ‘tunefulness’ – how can a group make music if it can’t play chords or harmony, you might ask. But, oddly enough, the ways in which each piece builds its ebb and flow of sounds means that there is always a feeling of an harmonic centre and a sense of rhythmic progression. Within a few beats, I was immersed in a thoughtfully constructed soundscape that was built like a Gothic cathedral, with the aural equivalent of open and cavernous halls, narrow passages of darkness and the ever present threat of freakish gargoyles.
The feel of the gothic is echoed by Neil Bennun’s liner notes, which veer between what feel like a loosely translated drunken rant on Elizabethan dramatists (calling Robert Green a ‘dick for famously saying that Shakespeare was ‘an upstart crow’), or a surreal essay on music (saying that this CD ‘is to the auditory precept what S & M is to the survival instinct’). Of course, I have taken these quotes out of context, but the notes themselves are as much a commentary on the music here, as the music is a commentary on Kruger’s photograph. Indeed, when he does speak of the pieces themselves, Bennun has a rich and deep perception of what the pieces convey and how they work. All in all, there is a multimodal, multimedia circularity between the sounds that Fiium Shaark produce and the ways in which the words and images mesh with these.
Inside the gatefold sleeve, there are further comments and insights. For example, that Ravalico and Khroustaliov trained as architects, or that Fischlerlehner had lived close to the Zeiss Planetarium. The nicest of these comes from the revelation that Ravalico’s ‘old uncle’ had once been employed to ‘service church bells, alarms and the sirens of factories and the fire brigade’. This is not necessarily a comment on the music here (nor is the revelation that Khrostaliov used to drive a Zil) but there is a feeling, despite the disconnectedness of these ‘facts’, despite the oddness of Bennuns’s liner notes, despite the apparent randomness of the sounds that the trio produces, that everything is connected and has a logic - even if this is not one that you fathom on first listen.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Not Applicable: NOT036
Rudi Fischerlehner: drums: Maurizio Ravalico: percussion; Isambard Khroustaliov: electronics
Recorded: 2013-2015, London, Aarhus, Berlin.
The title of this CD is taken from a piece by American artist’s Barbara Kruger’s lenticular photograph – which is titled ‘Untitled (Help! I am locked inside this picture / We are astonishingly lifelike)’, and is well worth looking at prior to listening to the tracks here. The opening track, ‘Conundrums’, begins with an insistent but almost subliminal electronic buzz over a solid but backgrounded drum and percussion track. This is an audio equivalent of Kruger’s photograph, in that the listener realises that there is something here which requires attention but the overlaying of sounds means that it is not at all obvious which aspects are significant. The idea of a trio of electronics, percussion and drums might, at first, challenge any preconceptions of ‘tunefulness’ – how can a group make music if it can’t play chords or harmony, you might ask. But, oddly enough, the ways in which each piece builds its ebb and flow of sounds means that there is always a feeling of an harmonic centre and a sense of rhythmic progression. Within a few beats, I was immersed in a thoughtfully constructed soundscape that was built like a Gothic cathedral, with the aural equivalent of open and cavernous halls, narrow passages of darkness and the ever present threat of freakish gargoyles.
The feel of the gothic is echoed by Neil Bennun’s liner notes, which veer between what feel like a loosely translated drunken rant on Elizabethan dramatists (calling Robert Green a ‘dick for famously saying that Shakespeare was ‘an upstart crow’), or a surreal essay on music (saying that this CD ‘is to the auditory precept what S & M is to the survival instinct’). Of course, I have taken these quotes out of context, but the notes themselves are as much a commentary on the music here, as the music is a commentary on Kruger’s photograph. Indeed, when he does speak of the pieces themselves, Bennun has a rich and deep perception of what the pieces convey and how they work. All in all, there is a multimodal, multimedia circularity between the sounds that Fiium Shaark produce and the ways in which the words and images mesh with these.
Inside the gatefold sleeve, there are further comments and insights. For example, that Ravalico and Khroustaliov trained as architects, or that Fischlerlehner had lived close to the Zeiss Planetarium. The nicest of these comes from the revelation that Ravalico’s ‘old uncle’ had once been employed to ‘service church bells, alarms and the sirens of factories and the fire brigade’. This is not necessarily a comment on the music here (nor is the revelation that Khrostaliov used to drive a Zil) but there is a feeling, despite the disconnectedness of these ‘facts’, despite the oddness of Bennuns’s liner notes, despite the apparent randomness of the sounds that the trio produces, that everything is connected and has a logic - even if this is not one that you fathom on first listen.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
