The Fun Years
God Was Like, No
(2010, Barge)
RIYL = Gas, Fennesz, Tim Hecker
Anymore it seems there are fewer and fewer people who can deliver on promises of ambient music that settles in at the level of the soul. Kids are flipping textures and turning loops, but really it seems, even among the heavy weights, that the field’s of ambience are proving less and less workable. The newer breed of ambience feels like its disappearing right while you listen to it, causing you not only to forget the music but to forget other tidbits lodged in your memory. It's dangerous. Fortunately we have The Fun Years: the last, greatest stallion of ambience, collage, drone and Beauty with a capital B. What can I say about The Fun Years that I haven’t already said? Not a whole lot because, honestly, the groups evolving through stages of molasses. They may have eight tracks this time around with some shorter song lengths, but they’re still teeth deep in pools of low-level static, candied loops, meandering melodies and scoops of nostalgia. And The Fun Years are still the best at what they do. One beautiful new aspect of God Was Like, No is the opportunity to buy the album on vinyl, a first for The Fun Years (and a must for anyone). I suppose there is one thing that I would like to speak to, though I doubt I’ll flesh it out fully. It’s that The Fun Years, amidst all the gorged gorgeousness present in their tracks, levels out a wave of distemperate oddness that softly colours their work, lifting it off center, deleveling it, positioning everything perfectly awkwardly, just just enough, enough to keep you connected, unforgetting, remembering, synced and engaged. It simply sets hooks in your brain. It's simply one of the best of the year – no question.
Pausal Lapses (2010, Barge)
RIYL = Sawako, Stars of the Lid, Chihei Hatakeyama
The meticulous releases of the indomitable Barge Records are always welcome here at Forest Gospel. Based on the label’s track record and inclination towards quality rather than quantity, no matter what it is they’re putting out, you know it’s going to be good. As you can tell from the dearth of new reviews on FG, I’ve been kind of struggling to get excited about anything new. Lots of people have sent me above average albums that I’m sure I will get around to sooner or later, but nothing that simply demands that I up a shout from the rooftops, “listen to this, fair gents!” It’s got me doubting myself, doubting 2010, doubting music as a whole. It’s been a pretty silly couple of weeks. Anyways, that type of attitude isn’t really the best way to approach something like Pausal’s Lapses, but fortunately, after submerging myself in the album, headphones cranked up all the way, I was swimming listlessly through its various caverns; lovingly, Lapses approached me. I guess introductions are in order: Pausal is Simon Bainton and Alex Smalley from the UK. The duo layers guitars atop guitars, atop pianos, violins and classical vinyl samples, and then boil it all down to a serendipitously dreamy soup; granted, the kind you pour into your ears. Lapses, the duo’s debut, is rich and creamy, full of morphing ambient textures, muffled high end resonance and neatly placed field recordings. Everything is pretty minimalistic, and though the twelve tracks span from one to fifteen minutes, it’s all flows interconnectedly. Pausal's work here is definitely top tier in terms of ambient restraint and being the catalyst to some plush dream/sleepiness. Lapses is the art of the unwind.
-Thistle
Pausal also mixed a terrific Typecast for Type Records. The mix contains The Fun Years, Quantec, Stephan Mathieu and more. Download it here.
The Fun Years Baby, It’s Cold Inside
(Barge, 2008)
You may have noticed that Baby, It’s Cold Outside now outranks Gang Gang Dance’s Saint Dymphna (my pick for #1 of 2008). I still love Saint Dymphna, but I was slightly off target when I relegated The Fun Years’ baritone guitar and turntable masterpiece to spot number two on that list. There is so much to rave about here I don’t know where to start, so I will just end: an utterly gorgeous masterpiece of blissful moods through meticulously blissed-out means.
Animal Hospital Memory (03.2009, Barge) RIYL = Scott Tuma, The Fun Years, Ben Frost
I think that the very best new music being produced is often the kind that is near impossible to define. You know, the kind of music that avoids easy categorization and somehow overturns all preconceived notions about what an album should be. Animal Hospital’s Memory is shining example of that kind of album. However, I think I would do it a disservice to stop there - to simply say, “This is some of the best new music I’ve heard and you’ll only understand once you’ve listened to it.” While that statement would be true, it’s just more fun to risk embarrassment by trying to define something that is this good. I think the first and safest way to approach Memory is in terms of Barge. What I mean here, is in terms of the label which has presented this fine recording. The first thing that you should know is that Barge Records does not put simply ‘good music.’ In fact, the label seems to avoid even ‘great music.’ Nope, with only a couple releases seeping out a year, Barge only has time to spend their energy on the very best new music being produced in the realms of forward thinking experimental music. This couldn’t be more evident than in last year’s glorious sophomore release from The Fun Years, Baby, It's Cold Inside. With Memory, Barge has just upped the ante. Animal Hospital is one Kevin Micka and Memory is pretty much the coolest experimental record I’ve heard, probably since that Fun Years record. Micka is a multi-instrumentalist of the highest quality and in the years proceeding Memory has honed his skills in a live setting by playing and looping his instruments into effervescent concoctions that sound like the work produced by a four piece band (and a talented one at that). Memory continues this aesthetic, using a looping pedal at a much more sophisticated level than I’ve heard in the past. However, even with his obvious relationship with loops, Memory provides so much more. The album’s seven tracks range from 2 minutes to 17 minutes in length and in the course of the album’s stretch, make some unexpected turns that extend the realm Animal Hospital’s sound into mythic territory. The opener starts things of peaceful, contemplative and clear with a tinkering music box and crystal guitar lines. This is followed by the epic stroke of “His Belly Burst,” a gorgeous and lengthy track built up Cello work contributed by Jonah Sacks. The work morphs and bleeds into "2nd Anniversary," a transitional track filled with swelling drones that are punctuated by resonant staccato guitar plucks that pierce the atmosphere of the song. All this builds up slowly to the centerpiece of the album, “…and ever.” I almost feel like I should put up a spoiler alert here because it might be better if you were blindsided by this track without being previously tipped off. Consider yourself warned: after laying an elegant foundation, Micka sends Memory in to astral territory. “...and ever” is announced by a thick base line that is quickly layered with a series of guitars and then punctuated by a griffin slaying guitar line that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Boris record. As the structure heaves, Micka’s briefly adds vocals into the mix and then continues to send the structure heavenward. The track continues to build until the building fades into the sky and the clouds become the building and the building becomes the clouds. It is kind of what you would expect to accompany an onslaught led by Zeus or something. As the dust of construction clears, a heart beat emerges along with a clutter of loops and again, that throbbing bass. I don’t know exactly how this here Animal Hospital works, but the entrance of Micka’s wordless vocals and comforting guitar line on “a safe place” makes me feel like the previous destruction/construction was simply the cleansing agent necessary for some poor animals full recovery. Once “Nostalgia” sets in, everything feels perfect and resolved, but this brief beachside sojourn is simply a daydream setting up the final sixteen plus minutes of the title track. I won’t completely destroy the sequencing by revealing the ending, suffice it to say – it is good, really really good. So yeah, there's not a specific defining thread that I can tie the whole thing together with, but Memory is all the better for it. I don’t imagine that there is any other way to move from Scott Tuma to Godspeed! to Mogwai to Boris to Tortoise to The Fun Years and still make a cohesive and wholly individual record. After you hear Memory, it will all make sense. I guess I can only say this: Thank you Animal Hospital and thank you Barge!
The Fun Years Baby, It’s Cold Inside (07.2008, Barge) Verdict = You may need to skip the first 200 words or so before you actually start reading anything resembling a review…
For the record, this is the third time that I have re-written this review. And I’m not talking about my average under-300-words reviews either. I’ve scrapped some pretty lengthy pieces on this thing. “Why all the effort?” you ask? That’s a good question. By now, if you’ve become familiar with us Forest Gosplitarians, you’ll have noticed that we have absolutely no problem publishing a hasty first draft full of descriptive vagaries and scattered with grammatical and spelling errors. To be honest, I can’t promise much more in reference to this review, but the conscious effort with which I attempt to overcome my intrinsic incapacities this time is not a random turn of heart in favor of the dignity of the English language, it’s an impassioned effort to do justice to what may very well be one of the most important records I have heard in years. I apologize for the dramatics. I actually have a well worn list of these important records (I think the last time I mentioned this list was in the review of this band’s previous album; coincidence?). I like to reference them and check on them and relive them over and over in the most respectable fashion possible. It is something of a distressing obsession for those who are most familiar with me, but alas, personal honesty is policy here. OK, I’ll stop trying to delay this: recently I stumbled across an album called Life-Sized Psychoses by The Fun Years, an experimental guitar/ turntable duo. The album was a late, inspired discovery of what is now one of my favourite albums to have been released in 2007 (well documented in both its review and the recent recap of my favourite albums that I missed from last year). So, I was certainly surprised when, after having only had few short months with their Barge debut, I received news from that wonderful label that The Fun Years were already finishing up their follow up titled, Baby, It’s Cold Inside. It snuck up so quick I barely had time to even think, let alone get excited. Well, regardless of the timing of its arrival, consider me completely floored. As hypnotic and pristine as I thought their debut was I would have never imagined that I would be able to, with complete honesty, crown Baby, It’s Cold Inside as such a massive improvement. The reason being, to me, Life-Sized Psychoses stood shoulder to shoulder with peak releases of everyone in the genre from William Basinski to Jan Jelinek to Tim Hecker to, well, everyone (we’re talking experimental ambient here); it’s that good. The difficulty I’m having is explaining why. The inherent vagaries built into minimalistic, drone based music make it hard enough to just describe what it is, let alone to make comparisons and even more, to explain why it is good. Heaven knows there is an immutable sea of ambient drone records out there that are, to put it simply, a waste of time. However, if you compared the description of an album from that middling sea and one from the afore to mentioned masters of the form the report would probably look close to identical and in some cases would only separated by the verdict of whether it was incredible or simply just there. Well, whatever that special ingredient is, The Fun Years have it and they must have used every last drop on Baby, It’s Cold Inside. The building blocks this time around are the same with Ben Recht on guitar and Isaac Sparks on turntables. Together they’ve produced another radiant, waterlogged mirage of warped vinyl and gentle guitars. Perhaps, one subtle difference between Baby, It’s Cold Inside and its predecessor is an injection of more recognizable composition. Undoubtedly, both albums have been meticulously composed, but something about the undercurrent pushing The Fun Years’ new record feels more controlled or mastered and elicits a greater sense of euphoria in its slow variations. And for those foreign to drone music, it’s accessible! This is pop ambience if I’ve ever heard it. There is no greater entry way into the genre if you have been wary of its investments in the past; just beware, you may never find anything this good again once you’ve been initiated. It simply must be heard to be believed; absolutely magical, just listen to the track below...
The Fun Years Life-Sized Psychoses (04.2007, Barge) Verdict = A Personal Favourite
Good experimental sound artists are successful by being able to capture a mood with the sound they create. The music is often described as cinematic because the ambiance of the tracks evokes a certain emotion that seems to be kin to a hypothetical scene straight off of some lost movie reel. Great sound artists however move beyond creating just simple scenes; the best musicians turn their albums into imaginary films set in entirely new worlds that must be digested from the very first second to the very last. Recently, under some scrutiny and hours of ridiculous introspection I strived to create a list of my personal favourite albums of all time. For the most part it was far too difficult to arrange this top twenty-five into ranking, but there were some definitive favourites that if I would have forced myself to create rankings would most certainly have landed themselves into my top five. I think my number one and two spots would have to be awarded to The Kallikak Family’s May 23rd 2007 and Microphones Mount Eerie albums. Both albums create a world entirely their own and create a composition that when listened to as a whole becomes much more than the sum of its parts. The Fun Years’ Life-Sized Psychoses is one of these kind of albums and given a little bit of time beyond infinite plays I have already awarded it, I’m am sure it can go head-to-head and likely bump off the slightly embarrassing but necessary inclusion of Deftones’ White Pony album slipping in at number twenty five. So how about some description of the album (though when albums are this good words feel inane)? The Fun Years is an American duo of turntablist Isaac Sparks and guitarist Ben Recht. The sound of their debut, Life-Sized Psychoses, is something of a magical, crackly, all consuming particle ocean of sound. While that description could probably be applied to numerous, worthy recipients (apt comparisons to The Fun Life could probably be leveled at all the favourites: Philip Jeck, Jasper Tx, Fennesz, Eluvium, Tim Hecker, etcetera, etcetera), somehow Life-Sized Psychoses manages that rare feat of hitting every note and mood perfectly. I’m not sure why I didn’t hear more about this album last year. I mean I noticed it in a couple minute places but in my view this album has been terribly under looked. I think, in retrospect, this could have definitely topped my 2007 top 50. I guess in the personal audience that is my schizophrenic brain ,it will now have to battle it out for a spot on my top 25 of all time. I hope that is a suitable compliment for an incredible piece of music.
The Fun Years
