...departing, returning, remaining. The business of life is the acquisition of memories. In the end, that's all there is.
from Musique Machine:
Experimental ambient guitarist and composer Mike Fazio has been playing and performing for decades now, really coming into his own during the 2000's with a profific string of soundscape albums under a variety of aliases on his own Faith Strange label.
Since the release of "Crossing of Shadows " in 2007, Fazio hasn't released any music under the orchestramaxfieldparrish alias, focusing on other aliases like A Guide For Reason and Sonic Arts Society, as well as putting out several albums under his own name. While there may be thematic ideas behind each alias in Fazio's mind, generally I find his style remains reliably consistent.
He tends to create a sort of tonal soup, a free rhythm soundscape fashioned from heavily processed instrumental noodling, awash in glints and glimmers. It is resplendently resonant, wet, and glowing, tuneful at times, but almost completely impromptu and unstructured. It is also immediately emotionally relatable, a sort of mournful, weary peace, with occasional brooding excursions into paranoia.
Fazio chose to resurrect the orchestramaxfieldparrish name in 2016 with two new albums. "Instant Light" is one of his most quiet and abstract works, in which his guitar is not immediately obvious. it is also one of his most complex and varied, new sounds emerging from the corners and crevices at a constant pace, completely transforming the ambient environment every three or four minutes. The improvised feel is diminished on this recording, which is highly composed and layered.
There are the mesmerizing sounds of bells, and natural recordings cleverly intermingled with their digital imitations: crashing surf, rain, and distant thunder. In the 2nd piece, I hear the soothing halcyon chords of dub techno, warmly flickering from behind a membrane of thick honey. Angelic, choral pads swell and surge out from the deep. I am reminded of the ethereal consonant zen of early ambient pioneer Iasos. As such, this is one of Fazio's most peaceful and contended albums, in contrast to the "Interiors" album from 2013 under his own name, with its brooding sampled musings about death.
The 3rd track feels much like classic 90's downtempo with its dreamy two chord alternation, taking the yearning tonalities of house and chillout music and floating them in an endless expanse, scrambling the rhythms into a mild flickering and shifting. Fans of Ishq or Vladislav Delay would likely enjoy this, as they have done a similar thing. Fragmenting the notes into scintillating tiny shards and refashioning sounds from the particles, the result is something of a tuned cloud. Are these obliterated chords sourced from a synthesizer, a guitar, or something else? With Fazio, it's impossible to tell, as digital processing is his forte.
There are no lapses into pure silence as one might find on an A Guide For Reason release. An airy drift underlying the entire piece, an infinite reverb contrail. Each of the three lengthy tracks begins with a return to field recordings of a thunderstorm. The bells from the 1st piece are reprised in the 3rd. There is a great thematic unity to the album as a whole. The album ends with a receeding siren wail, which lasts nearly ten minutes.
This is one hell of a beautiful space trip. It might even be my favorite Mike Fazio album, and I am a longtime fan. It is an ambient recording with astonishing textural beauty, compositional depth and complexity, engaging from start to finish.
5 stars
Josh Landry
from textura:
orchestramaxfieldparrish: Instant Light Faith Strange Recordings
orchestramaxfieldparrish: A Midsummer's Night Faith Strange Recordings
Of all the group and solo projects with which Mike Fazio has been involved (A Guide For Reason and Gods of Electricity, to name but two), it's his orchestramaxfieldparrish that is my favourite. In fact, so dazzled was I by 2008's The Silent Breath of Emptiness, I contacted him about the possibility of creating something for textura's first label release, Kubla Khan; not only did he contribute the magnificent “Waning Moon Over Sunless Sea” to it, he mastered the album, too. Subsequent to that, Fazio released the mesmerizing Crossing of Shadows in 2007, as well as To The Last Man / Index Of Dreaming, though that set appeared in 2009 under the orchestramaxfieldparrish presents ÆRA alias. Issued on his own Faith Strange imprint, as much of his output is, Fazio has just made two new orchestramaxfieldparrish releases available, both of them well worthy of one's attention and equally distinguished examples of his highly developed artistry.
Though different instruments are used on the four tracks of A Midsummer's Night, an impression of unity is achieved when processing treatments are applied liberally to all four. Two pieces were created using prepared archtop guitar, another pizzicato lute guitar and mellophone, and the fourth piano. The opening “Head To Heart” illustrates Fazio's mastery at sculpting sound and handling pacing and dynamics. For nine minutes, shimmering swaths of archtop guitar advance and recede, the thrum and rumble of the instrument suggestive of waves rippling ashore. The sound tapestry expands on “In These Long Years” when rapid, spidery strums of the pizzicato lute guitar are countered by the muted, horn-like murmur of the mellophone, whereas the treatments applied to piano on the twenty-three-minute “It Just Is” radically transform the instrument into an uninterrupted, pulsating stream wherein piano clusters occasionally surface. In all four settings, sounds advance with a precision that feels almost scientifically calibrated, the elements' movements managed by Fazio with the kind of sensitivity that comes from a lifetime of musical practice.
Though recording info beyond that already mentioned doesn't appear on A Midsummer's Night, one guesses it's the more recently recorded of the two sets when details included with Instant Light clarify that its two parts were recorded in 2013 and 2009, respectively; a note on the inner sleeve reveals that Instant Light comprises “private, archival works not originally intended for release,” and a detailed account of the background leading up to the release appears, too. The range of instruments on Instant Light is also greater than On A Midsummer's Night, with Fazio augmenting his customary electric guitar (prepared, processed, glissando, treated) with singing bowls, metals, electronics, modular synthesis, and field recordings (collected between 1988 and 2013).
The presence of singing bowls and field-recorded rain on “...They Would Fly Upwards” immediately individuates Instant Light from A Midsummer's Night. Not only is the sound palette different, but there's also a tonal shift whereby the former's direct connection to the physical world makes the latter seem more ethereal by comparison; further to that, the resonant ping of the bowls lends the peaceful setting an almost Gamelan character, something absent on the other recording. Far stormier is “And Be Carried Off and Vanish,” which also threads generous helpings of Fazio's guitar playing and bold electronic treatments into a swirling mix that grows ever more celestial as it advances towards its nineteen-minute end. The recording's so-called second part “When Your Dreams of a Perfect Tomorrow Come True” perpetuates the texturally rich soundscaping style of the first with shimmering, metal-tinged surges that convulse, reverberate, and billow with controlled regularity.
If there's anything regrettable about this exceptional pair, it's that only 100 physical copies of each have been produced (though they are available digitally, too). In a perfect world, there would be a place for explorative music of such genuine quality in thousands of receptive listeners' homes, but such a world, alas, doesn't seem to be the one we inhabit.
When seeking truly quiet, peaceful music, most of what I hear I leave, not sensing internal depth below the sound. This is different. In a moment when subtle stimulation (a bit paradoxically) is sought as a means to deeper tranquility, this excels beautifully. For others who might have connected with Stray Ghost or Silver Mount Zion or Taphephobia, yet whose minds can dwell in greater and healthier lucid calm, this is remarkable. L
Free-flowing, loosely structured songs that borrow lightly from jazz and ambient but expand in directions all their own. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 7, 2023
With all proceeds going to benefit Ukraine, the latest from Angela Winter is a beautifully haunting work that centers the human voice. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 16, 2022
With no forward momentum and therefore no expectation of the next note, eventually these pieces etch out a pattern, at a welcomed glacial pace. Piano is welcomed also. Very well thought out. Richard Erickson
