CD Review: Michael Fakesch "Marion" --IDM

[Filosofo del Rap]

Marion

Michael Fakesch

Musik Aus Strom 2001

Tracks:

01. Demon Stration
02. Imac
03. Rand VA
04. Dry/Wed
05. Surfaise
06. From Crocut
07. Jazdrive
08. Diesehle
09. Rand VC
10. Sega

[img=http://www.skinny.com/music/reviews/2000/02/covers/fakesch.jpg]

Michael Fakesch has never minced any words about his and Chris De Luca's admiration of Autechre; in fact, the duo (also known as Funkstörung) wear it on their sleeve that much of Funkstörung's back catalog follows a stylistic trajectory similar to that of Ae's Booth and Brown. Having said that, Fakesch doesn't fade away from making a mature analysis of where things are going. "We..have been quite dissapointed by the big names-releases. Of course 'Windowlicker' or Autechre's 'EP7' were good releases, but not as good as we expected them. Either our musical taste changed a little bit or these new records really don't have the "WOOOOW" feeling like their older releases."

So what, then, is to be made of Fakesch collecting pieces of his three older and stylistically-dated Demon EPs for release as an album named after his girlfriend, Marion? Is this oversight on his part, or merely housecleaning with a little help from Funkstorung's (and their label Music Aus Strom's) new American distributor, Stud!o K7?

At first listen, one would be inclined to think the former; both "Rand VA" and "Rand VC" smack of Ae's non-repetitive experiment "Flutter," replicating that odd door-pounding bass thud hitting irregularly with random metallic bits floating around in different directions on both. Jazdrive could be a dead ringer remix for "Under BOAC" from LP5, with samples of wicked drum solos substituted for the intricately programmed Autechre material.

But that's just it; Marion isn't intricately programmed and cold and precise and, well, hollow. Instead, Jazdrive has more in common with the blazing fires of Amon Tobin's batucada tendencies, something bordering sheer improvisational madness with smatterings of filterng over the top. The technical is the icing on Fakesch's melodious cake, threading the needle with a svelte swatch of sound that warms both versions of "Rand." And perhaps the most beautiful track on the release, "Sega," is not the subordination of percussive sound to simple dulcet tones as on much later Autechre, but the exact opposite. Thus it's not so much that Marion is well-done copy work, but original work done well.

(Review ::::: Heath K. Hignight) de Skinny.com