Irish composer Fergus Kelly continues to mine his preoccupation with sampling post-punk music on Swarm Logic (ROOM TEMPERATURE RTCD20), following on from his 2021 project Dirt Behind The Daydream and also audible on the record Plate Spinning.
Actually it’s not just post-punk, since on Swarm Logic many genres are fair game for his sampling radar – soundtrack music, 1960s jazz, reggae, modern classical, trip-hop and electronics – and it’s not just sampling, as he himself plays bass and percussion, resulting in a sleek, angular, razor-sharp production. The original ‘Dirt’ starting point was (I gather) a shortish experiment, but he enjoyed it all so much that he decided to delve into his library of samples, edits, used and unused pieces from the original, just to see if he could sustain interest for a full-lengther. He certainly likes the idea of bringing “new life” to music and letting “source materials interconnect and refract off each other”, allowing the listener to enjoy micro-seconds of recognised or half-recognised tracks; such moments, to Kelly, are “memory triggers”, and he’ll happily let our brains interact with the piece, participating actively through our ears and our thoughts.
His use of of the word “refract” exactly describes the hall-of-mirrors effect that’s buried in the grooves, but rather than abandoning the listener in a chaotic crazy house (as in the end of The Lady From Shanghai), Fergus Kelly exercises great control over his materials. That’s evident in the concision of the album – 14 tracks all of the ideal ‘pop song’ length – and the economy of his method. He himself likens it to “surgery”, using terms like “grafted” and “sutured”, as if he were a miniaturist cultivating a Bonsai tree. Another sampling composer who could be likened to a surgeon is John Wall, who likewise derived his music from carefully-selected records, but Wall (much as we loved his increasingly minimal work) could also be rather clinical and antiseptic, whereas today’s spin just sizzles with groove, syncopation, and swing feeling. I’d like to think of it as a kind of intellectual dance music, created with a real love for the history of recorded music, and assembled with élan, attention to detail, and flashes of genius. And I also like the way it grows increasingly odder and eccentric, the deeper you go in (it would have been great as a vinyl LP).
Very far from being a vapid pastiche or a slice of kitsch, this is a genuine hand-crafted work of art. From 17 July 2023.
See also: The Platelayer
Thanks so much Ed, I really appreciate your kind words – glad you enjoyed it !