Robert Fesler

μP RPF78

Genre: DARK AMBIENT / DRONE / METAL, ELECTRONIC

Deluxe 4LP

Boomkat Product Review:

’μP RPF78' is a comprehensive four-LP anthology of Belgian synth builder Robert Fesler's cloistered, cryptic recordings made between 1975 -1987. The set contains some of the most puzzlingly brilliant isolationist electronic music we've heard - nervous, oddly-tuned fractured bleeps and inward-facing drones presented in Metaphon’s typically luxurious, highly detailed style, with only one of the tracks here released before. Followers of work by Robert Turman, Kevin Drumm, Daphne Oram - consider it essential listening.

Robert Fesler was an engineer in the medical field by day and spent his spare time building synths, making use of two of his creations - the Synthese 756 and the μP RPF78 - to help illustrate his tangled inner world. For Fesler, the act of recording, which he approached instinctively without using overdubs, was almost a meditative process. "Building my synthesisers and working with them enabled me to sublimate my anxieties," he's quoted as saying in the accompanying text. According to Discogs, he only released two tracks officially: 'Tristesse' (which is included in this set) and 'La Temps Des Poissons Touche A Sa Fin', both of which appeared on a rare 1984 split with Dominique Lawalrée, Baudouin Oosterlynck and Eric De Visscher. Fesler passed away last year, and Metaphon's Timo van Luijk was able to pore through his tape archive, digitising the best material and assembling it into an enigmatic portrait of his hermetic existence.

The music itself is hard to place; Fesler shares plenty of creative DNA with his split-mates, particularly Oosterlynck, but his unsettled, alienated direct-to-tape dubs marinate in their own pool of emotionality, philosophy and trauma. There are aesthetic links to electronic music's early innovators, of course; we can hear traces of Delia Derbyshire's uneasy, cybernetic experiments and Florian Fricke's earliest "big Moog" contemplations. Fesler's approach, though, seems more closed in, his skilful technical process - the building of each synth by hand - and the freeness of his methodology is stitched into the very fabric of the recordings, giving us a defined sonic fingerprint and some access to Fesler's troubled inner world.

'Deux Angoisses' (two anxieties), for example, is a protracted, esoteric exhalation; stripped to the bone, it's made up of raw, undulating synth tones that Fesler plays off each other, teasing out uncanny resonances to provoke a sense of creeping dread. And on 'Une Apocalypse de Jean', Fesler recites short passages from The Book of Revelation, juxtaposing the imposing words with distressed electrical charges that sound like knocks at the door rather than discernible rhythm.

He flashes sub-heavy drones with electronic explosions and saturated static on 'Missa Tenebrae' (mass of darkness), lurching into some kind of throat singing, unwittingly pre-empting Stephen O'Malley's entire career arc in the process. And if you need a break from the desolation, there's the salty 'Brouillard face à la Mer' (fog facing the sea), an alien sea shanty that chimes with Wolf Eyes' most unglued synth experiments, or the relatively playful 'Oiseaux Mécaniques', where Fesler marries synthetic chirps with winding, off-kilter rhythms. In the solace of his Bierges studio, Fesler quietly prophesied decades of secluded DIY experimental activity, letting his mind, studies and experiences guide him rather than latching himself to a wider scene or following the fickle desires of the market. 'μP RPF78' is a stunning anthology, and proof that there are still unheard treasures out there in back rooms and basements - if you're into outsider art, isolationist drone or the furthest peripheries of the DIY synth canon, this one's as good as it gets.

Deluxe 4LP (17)

Edition of 300, 4LP edition housed in a silkscreened linen box and including a 12 page booklet with notes by Robert Fesler and Baudouin Oosterlynck and a postcard with reproduction of oil on wood self-portrait by Robert Fesler. Also includes a download.

Play All Deluxe 4LP (17)