VARIOUS ARTISTS

Vs FBL remixes

LP, spa.RK

The “Lent”-album by Fibla has reached a status of inconquerability in my record collection, where I put it on whenever I am out of an idea of what to listen to, and it always works. Some tracks make good music to start or end DJ sets (not that I’d do so many of those, but sometimes I put on sets for myself as well), at other times it is just the perfect carpet to relax. The remixes on this vinyl only release are from eight different artists, therefore also putting different aspects and focuses on different sides of Fibla’s music, but nevertheless forming a complex and compact block of music as well. Some of the artists, like Rec Overflow, Stendec, or L’Usine, or Eedl and Ola Bergman try to get a taste of the more rhythmical side, putting on the deeper beats and dynamics. While .Tape.. Phluidbox and Braille explore the more ephemeral and “oceanic” (as I called it in that review) side of the tracks.

Remember, that these tracks are not from the Lent album, but from all kinds of compilations, which makes the overall closeness and compactness of the various tracks even more astonishing. Maybe because all of the artists manage to bring over one of the main points of Fibla, the usage of atmospheric tones, keyboards and synthie sounds almost like an impressionist painter using colours to transport an emotion or an, well, impression of a setting. Even Eedl’s scratching bass noises and weirdly bouncing breakbeats are just a juxtaposition to the big and warm sounds of electric chimes or the echoes of widestretched loops. Moreover, I have rarely heard such diligent and creative use of hall-effects and near / far – mix-effects in electronic music.

After all and in spite of all the work of electronic artists to divide their scene into tiny fragments, the differences are not so big. All of  these tracks could be played in the lounge area of any club, though at different times of the night. All of them have that timeless quality of the here and now, that is akin to so much electronic music. (You forget what the appeal was it had after a few months, but when you grab it out after some years you’ll be excited on how good it still is.) Though all of the tracks are to quirky and to structurally challenging to be dance music as such, they act as great company when doing almost everything, either alone or in a group of people.

A precious delight of beats and tones with a golden flow to measure up to the imagined refined lifestyle of the (post)modern, cultural urban elite crowding those metallic-leather but comfortable clubs night after night. But never dropping into the easy “everything goes” mentality of lush, pseudo-jazzed up Viennese coffeehouse music (that bores me to death, actually). Believe me, there are some places in Vienna, where you can listen to real electronic music that tries to find the formula for the next decades today. Not only in Barcelona.