Fear Of The Object (FOTO, if I may) here with their latest release Leaves Never Fall in Vain (TRUE BLANKING 04).
This combo have been producing their brand of music since about 2016, the result of a meeting between Kjell Bjørgeengen and Chris Cogburn. I did not much care for the four-CD release I heard in 2023, but today something seems to be turning me around. It’s very simple slow-moving drone music based on, I think, Cogburn’s notions of “vibrating objects” combined with whatever it is that Bjørgeengen does with his video oscillators. Cogburn doesn’t seem to be playing on today’s record, but Ingar Zach is taking up the cudgels for him with his typical “vibrating membrane” set up, something which I always imagine is about putting a rattling speaker on top of a drum skin. There’s also Aimee Theriot, regular FOTO player, with her electric cello, and a new talent in the team – Inga Margret Aas on double bass. Maybe it’s her acoustic deep register underpinnings that are giving shape and form and depth to what, on previous outings, I have perceived as a rather grey aimless murk.
The Norwegian Kjell Bjørgeengen has been more prominent with the video feebdack on A Thought For Two, when he did it with Keith Rowe. At that time he played the Dave Jones flood coil, which may be related to today’s instrument the Dave Jones Synthesizer. The creators involved speak about things like resonant frequencies, reflections in space, dialogue between artists, sound-and-image representations, that sort of thing; a lot of it is to do with the people involved, but it’s also about making objects speak. Poets also come into the orbit of the humming forces, including an 18th century Japanese poet who provided the title of the release.
All these hopes, fears, and intentions may have surfaced in improvised music across continents over the last 50 years, but it feels like FOTO have arrived at a much more distilled version somehow, daring to be more minimal, paring a performance down to the very bare essentials. Individual musical personalities are downplayed in favour of something quite different, almost transcendent. There’s a weight and purpose to the music which I overlooked before. (19/12/2024)