Tuesday, August 3, 2010

ANDRÈ FOISY – Seven thrones Review at Cracked

link here.

CDR still available here.

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ANDRÈ FOISY – Seven thrones

(CD/download, twilight luggage)

Immersion in sound, pure and simple and at the same time so complex and fascinating. Guitar drones vibrate something very deep inside the listeners system and resonate through his or her whole life, even if only for the hour or so they take. The humming of the amplifier, the warm yet fuzzy and distorted sound of the guitar, and the echoing boom of what they signify. While the rest of the world seems to freeze in its stasis of re-run poses and endless repetition of the same elements over and over again, within the static, glacially moving pace of a well executed guitar drone there is a multitude of dynamics and movement. You just have to open your ears to hear it.

André Foisy is one part of heavy masters of dystopian soundscapes and screaming apocalypse Locrian. At the same time last year as Locrian went off to strengthen its fundament by employing a full scale band for the first time, for their latest album “Territories”, Foisy went back to his roots, stripped bare everything else and took up his guitar set and left everything else. “Seven thrones” contains two long pieces of droning, rumbling and lifting guitar layers and sets him up right there with Fear Falls Burning, though his works are less refined and focusing on microscopic changes than those of Dirk Serries aka Fear Falls Burning. He seems to be more concentrating on long lines of sounds, evolving melodies and the overall big sound of echoing guitar chords.

Maybe the right connotation then should be Neil Young’s work for the soundtrack of “Dead Man”. After all the first track is called “Like light over the plain” and it is almost impossible not to have a cinemascopically big landscape in your mind with the sun just coming up while listening to it. I can see Foisy standing there in the plains with nothing but his guitar equipment, greeting the newborn sun in his own special, booming way. The second track is called “All through eternity” and that is much harder to imagine as “eternity” is a pretty long time and I am quite reluctant to get myself in a state of seeing universe imagery because that is too much of a hippie cliché to me. In comparison to the first track there seems to be less dynamics and more gentle waves and small movements within this track.

Foisy has a knack of making the two pieces evolve organically. Sometimes they seem to sway freely in the air, are subtle and soft. And then some time later you find yourself confronted with big waves of crashing chords, screaming strings and heavy distortion and it is all quite naturally so.

The CD is very much limited on twilight luggage, but I guess you can download it as well from their website. Interestingly, the label has taken the pains of sewing the CD into nice little black envelope with seven bars stamp-printed on them, signifying of course the seven thrones from the cover, but to get to the CD I had to take up my old, trustful knife and do a little destruction to the packaging. Twilight Luggage has really evolved into a main centrepoint for all sorts of very fringe music and each and everyone of their releases are highly recommended. Despite their small print runs. From the free improve jazz to the pure brutal noise madness, their releases are always as enjoyable as they are challenging.




www.twilightluggage.com

07/2010