Fa 2012 (w/ Mark Fell Mix)
Past made present: 'Fa', from Christian Fennesz's 1997 debut album, Hotel Paral.lel, re-licked by Mark Fell and the man himself. It's easy to forget how techno the original record was - as eMego put it, it was intended as "an exercise in exploring alternate means of hearing club-based music" - and interestingly, not to mention pleasingly, Fennesz has done nothing to soften or slow the locomotive 4/4 throb of 'Fa' for his 2012 version, even as he makes the atmospheres that encircle and enfold the beat more complex, more crisp, more lambent this time around. Mark Fell, whose recent spate of Sensate Focus material and collaboration with Terre Thaemlitz have seen him thoroughly engage with house music sounds, structures and aesthetics, is fine form too. His mix of 'Fa' is a cracker, reducing Fennesz's wall of sound to little more than a looped twinkle, opening up space over a rock-solid 4/4 thump to explore shuddering, stop-start polyrhyrhms; a sample of MLK's most famous speech comes across less as sly humour and more as a pining for a time when house music felt like part of a social as well as a musical revolution. Long time ago, that.
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Past made present: 'Fa', from Christian Fennesz's 1997 debut album, Hotel Paral.lel, re-licked by Mark Fell and the man himself. It's easy to forget how techno the original record was - as eMego put it, it was intended as "an exercise in exploring alternate means of hearing club-based music" - and interestingly, not to mention pleasingly, Fennesz has done nothing to soften or slow the locomotive 4/4 throb of 'Fa' for his 2012 version, even as he makes the atmospheres that encircle and enfold the beat more complex, more crisp, more lambent this time around. Mark Fell, whose recent spate of Sensate Focus material and collaboration with Terre Thaemlitz have seen him thoroughly engage with house music sounds, structures and aesthetics, is fine form too. His mix of 'Fa' is a cracker, reducing Fennesz's wall of sound to little more than a looped twinkle, opening up space over a rock-solid 4/4 thump to explore shuddering, stop-start polyrhyrhms; a sample of MLK's most famous speech comes across less as sly humour and more as a pining for a time when house music felt like part of a social as well as a musical revolution. Long time ago, that.
Past made present: 'Fa', from Christian Fennesz's 1997 debut album, Hotel Paral.lel, re-licked by Mark Fell and the man himself. It's easy to forget how techno the original record was - as eMego put it, it was intended as "an exercise in exploring alternate means of hearing club-based music" - and interestingly, not to mention pleasingly, Fennesz has done nothing to soften or slow the locomotive 4/4 throb of 'Fa' for his 2012 version, even as he makes the atmospheres that encircle and enfold the beat more complex, more crisp, more lambent this time around. Mark Fell, whose recent spate of Sensate Focus material and collaboration with Terre Thaemlitz have seen him thoroughly engage with house music sounds, structures and aesthetics, is fine form too. His mix of 'Fa' is a cracker, reducing Fennesz's wall of sound to little more than a looped twinkle, opening up space over a rock-solid 4/4 thump to explore shuddering, stop-start polyrhyrhms; a sample of MLK's most famous speech comes across less as sly humour and more as a pining for a time when house music felt like part of a social as well as a musical revolution. Long time ago, that.