FRINGO CHILLS – …IN NORWAY
Fringo Chills is the alias of German electronic music artist / synthesizer player Frank Rothe. Since 2015 he has released five albums under this name (including this one), each of its titles beginning with “…”.
“… In Norway” is inspired by the landscape, mountains and fjords of – you guessed it – Norway. And especially Norway in the Winter season, with its never-ending nights and northern lights (known as Aurora Borealis).
Rothe’s music is firmly rooted in the German electronic scene, the ‘Berlin school’. Some parts of the five long tracks sound as if they could’ve been made in the early days of Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, the time when new possibilities of synthesizers and sequencers were explored. But at the same time, the production is definitely contemporary – it is not just nostalgic.
All of the ‘long evolving rhythms and epic soundscapes’ (the longest track is just short of 20 minutes) are created with Frank Rothe on synths and sequencers, with a vocal guest performance of Katje Haring on Aurora Borealis.
Her beautiful soft voice and German spoken word lyrics brought me back to the moment I discovered ambient music in 1973, when I heard Ash Ra Tempel’s Jenseits on the radio (from Join Inn, featuring Klaus Schulze, Manuel Göttsching and the enchanting voice or Rosi Müller).
I had never heard anything like that before – it sounded like music from another world. Music like this was not called ‘ambient’ then – the legendary Ohr label called it ‘Kosmische Musik’ (cosmic music).
“… In Norway” can definitely also be filed under ‘Kosmische Musik’, even though its main source of inspiration is Norway, not space. But with the right circumstances, it’s easy to float away on this music – into space, to Norway, or wherever you like.
RUBBISH MUSIC – FATBERGS
Rubbish Music is not a self-deprecating reference to the musical content but to the source materials used to create this music: rubbish, or discarded materials. Rubbish Music is also the name of the duo of Kate Carr and Iain Chambers. Fatbergs is their second album, following up 2022’s Upcycling.
‘Fatbergs’ are ‘monsters built from wet wipes, nappies, food waste, fats, and oils, [which] haunt us as a nightmarish return of the soiled, rejected and rotten’.
The ‘stinking and roiling matter of fatbergs’ is the starting point of Rubbish Music’s compositions, in which they ‘creatively transform domestic waste items into engaging sound art’.
The music is not as ‘disgusting’ as this may sound. Carr and Chambers are experienced sound artists, who know how to transform field recordings and found sounds into an engaging soundscape.
Their ‘toolkit of rusty bells, dirty over grills, onion skins, toilet plungers, wine bottles, nasal spray, squeaky chicken toy’ and whatever else they found in the enormous mountains of waste finds new purpose in fascinating compositions that are part Musique Concrête, part electroacoustic music.
A different kind of upcycling, perhaps, but upcycling it is!