Fanpage
If it wasn't for those purveyors of innovative, quality and bespoke-packaged music - Yorkshire's very own Fox Food Records (think Oh, Rose for one...) - I'd know even less about about Stockholm-based artist Fanpage than I do now (clue not a lot), but when her debut album sounds this good, frankly who cares?
The album in question, "Trip", has to be up there alongside releases by Globelamp and the aforementioned (and fellow) Olympia, WA, trio as arguably amongst the most arresting records of the year (hint - you'll be reading about all three later in the year...)
Listening to this album you're immediately engulfed by a veritable Tsunami of a jarring, disconnected and ethereal aural experience - that somehow still feels all connected - a bewitching and textural pot-pourri - part slowpunk, shoegaze and post-punk industrial-pop - that is alway far more than the sum of it's parts. To be honest, I'm get the same frisson of excitement from this album as Globelamp's "Star Dust" - I love the way that both albums challenge, confront and refuse to make it easy for the listener - from the opening bars of "Happy meal" with it's heavily distorted bass riff that takes it's cue from the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army", over which the most bewitching of disembodied vocals and washed-out lyrics swell to a banshee wail - to "Keybone", with it's ghostly vocals seemingly floating over a soothing metronomic soundtrack - the added cadence of the chimes both sets and soothes the pulse.
"Smokesquare" is probably the most evocative track on the album. At times unworldly vocals are slowly suffocated by a wall of heavily reverbed and layered 'noise' - a towering wall of sound that threatens to engulf the listener - it's an incredibly claustrophobic track and is utterly compelling.
But the truth is that every track on this album demands your rapt attention, especially in the way that for all the divergent aural landscape that is so masterfully painted here, Fanpage's distinctive vocals allows the album to effortlessly flow - actually I'm convinced it's this which stitches the fabric of this record together...
Fanpage "Trip"
Fanpage Website
The album in question, "Trip", has to be up there alongside releases by Globelamp and the aforementioned (and fellow) Olympia, WA, trio as arguably amongst the most arresting records of the year (hint - you'll be reading about all three later in the year...)
Listening to this album you're immediately engulfed by a veritable Tsunami of a jarring, disconnected and ethereal aural experience - that somehow still feels all connected - a bewitching and textural pot-pourri - part slowpunk, shoegaze and post-punk industrial-pop - that is alway far more than the sum of it's parts. To be honest, I'm get the same frisson of excitement from this album as Globelamp's "Star Dust" - I love the way that both albums challenge, confront and refuse to make it easy for the listener - from the opening bars of "Happy meal" with it's heavily distorted bass riff that takes it's cue from the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army", over which the most bewitching of disembodied vocals and washed-out lyrics swell to a banshee wail - to "Keybone", with it's ghostly vocals seemingly floating over a soothing metronomic soundtrack - the added cadence of the chimes both sets and soothes the pulse.
"Smokesquare" is probably the most evocative track on the album. At times unworldly vocals are slowly suffocated by a wall of heavily reverbed and layered 'noise' - a towering wall of sound that threatens to engulf the listener - it's an incredibly claustrophobic track and is utterly compelling.
But the truth is that every track on this album demands your rapt attention, especially in the way that for all the divergent aural landscape that is so masterfully painted here, Fanpage's distinctive vocals allows the album to effortlessly flow - actually I'm convinced it's this which stitches the fabric of this record together...
Fanpage "Trip"
Fanpage Website
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