My dear friends Scott Foust and Karla Borecky are Idea Fire Company, now firmly back to basics as a duo, and their Postcards (SWILL RADIO 033) LP arrived here 2nd April 2013. It’s nine instrumental tracks, produced by varying combinations of synth drones, radio wave noise, chamber piano, and more of that flippin’ trombone which we last heard on their 2011 LP, Music From the Impossible Salon. Apart from the trombone there’s nothing wrong with any of it, but ‘Port Lligat’ stands out with its unusual jagged-edge sounds, produced with a combination of a harp and a guitar (and that awful trombone playing) to generate a very uncertain state of mind for the listener, a contrived psychological ambiguity. We could say the same about ‘Oslo’, the long track on Side B which conjures a very desolate sorrowful mood from piano-playing and layers of tapes – forlorn, attenuated tones that stir your empathy. Throughout, Karla’s piano work shows her increasing versatility on that instrument; when required, she can play echoing long notes for a bleak effect, or simple melodies that somehow evoke European salon music of the 19th century – or at least a faded photograph of same. She’s the romantic, whereas Foust is from the cynic school of philosophy; his contributions (from radio and tape) are cryptic, minimal, spartan – and always added to the mix with consummate care, deliberation, and attention to detail. I personally find his trombone playing hard to swallow, not because of the amateurish way he plays it, but mainly on the grounds that what he produces just seems so inappropriate to the overall tenor of the record; it’s verging on comedic, and also feels like it’s intended as a snide riposte to the precepts of free improvisation (a genre which I know he detests).
The record is themed on travel, and while each track is named after a specific locale – framed by the ‘Airport’ tracks which start and finish the album – there is absolutely no connection to the real world intended. Foust calls the music “imaginary impressions of places we have never been and do not exist, except in the mind.” This subtle strategy is a tribute to the work of Raymond Roussel, the French poet who wrote Impressions Of Africa and was an influence on the Surrealists, but it’s probably also part of Foust’s ongoing project to restate and re-present the polemic of Guy Debord, the severe French philosopher who sneered at the idea of the middle classes going on holiday to exotic locations, because of the futility of the idea that they could escape “The Spectacle”. There’s a short booklet enclosed which adds fleeting narratives to each of the musical titles, and as far as the usually-austere Foust is concerned, this is a huge concession in the direction of widening audience appeal. Postcards is also an appropriate title for describing the rather static nature of each tune; they’re like snapshots from the duo’s imaginary holidays, rather than cine films, and as such don’t allow much progress or change in the music. In all, I’m finding this tuneful record much easier to digest than the Impossible Salon LP, although it still seems steeped in the same sense of melancholy and world-weary sadness that has apparently descended like a fine mist upon this husband and wife team’s music, since the Island of Good Taste album. Nice high quality mastering and pressing on thick vinyl, good presentation all round.
