Label: Few Crackles – FC05
Format: Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM, Limited Edition
Country: UK
Released: 2022
Genre: Electronic
Style: Experimental, Abstract
Mystery nighttime folk groupthink on the equally mysterious few crackles label. Record of the year?
This one has been haunting my hard drive for ages. Lost in the pressing plant shuffle, it has remain a nebulous presence that felt like it might disappear if I looked at it directly. Now it has finally made it onto the physical plane. I can only assume, via the artist names, that ssabae is a mutation of bassæ who’s first couple of records appeared on the label in 2018 and 2021. I blinked and missed the first, but the second was a weird and addictive mix of sweet but odd vocal glossolalia and chilly dubbed-out electronics. This one is a different creature entirely. Calling to mind the hazey golden age of French commune folk, it has a a more collective, but no less ethereal, sound. It’s an aesthetic that I’m a complete fool for. One which evokes the long shadow of radical 60s still falling across rural France into the late 80s. Hurdy-Gurdy, tapes, saxophone and recording experiments in the farmhouse kitchen remind me of the muddy fields and hennaed frizz of 70s Agnes Varda films. Or maybe I’m just an English middle-class idiot romanticising something I don’t really understand. Whatever, this record takes that anarchic sensiblity into a nighttime zone where plaintive guitar and that same haunted vocal meet uncanny mixing board operations and ouija-board sax. Is it me or is this record pretty much perfect. So glad I’m here for the manifestation... (Mint / New)
Tracklist
A1. Tous Les Matins du Monde
A2. Le Matin
A3. Structures Chaotiques
A4 . Paréidolie Vingt-Trois
B1. En Equilibre
B2. Sommet d’une Eglise
B3. Azurescens
B4. L’Archipel Fractal