Felix Hess ‎– Frogs 4
Felix Hess ‎– Frogs 4

Felix Hess ‎– Frogs 4

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Label: Not On Label (Felix Hess Self-released) ‎– none
Format: Vinyl, LP
Country: Netherlands
Released: 1985
Genre: Non-Music
Style: Field Recording, Experimental

Frighteningly scarce fabled field-recordings of FROGS by Fluxus associate Felix Hess, self-released / self-financed by the artist in 1985.  It's not so clear what led Mr Hess to travel the world recording our amphibious friends, but from the detailed field notes its evident he really went IN.  The first piece captures a duet between two separate species in Australia’s Northern Territory where the calls and responses drift in and out of sync like Reich-styled phasing experiment (think the infamous ‘Come Out’ tape piece).  Listening intently, with the dense chorus of insect chirping and omnipresent hum of the forest, it’s deeply hypnotic and easy to mistake the frog’s natural chirps for something electronic or man-made.  Another duets piece recorded in Mexico documents longer, overlapping and more drawn-out chirps interacting with crickets and grasshoppers, but what’s striking is the space and rhythm of the chirps are far from random and it becomes aware that there’s a distinct and unmistakable rhythm set in the initial apparent chaos.  The B-side focuses entirely on the Bufo Marinus toad (also infamous for it’s psychedelic 5MeO-DMT secretions) found within the Mayan ruins in Chiapas, Mexico and again is a heavily opiated 26:55 minute immersion into a dense, exotic tapestry of ceaseless toad choir that’s as tripped-out, otherworldly and bizarre as anything a mere human could conceive.  Granted, there’s a target audience of practically NONE for this kinda stuff, but along with other mad environmental records like early Folkways Ethnic Library, Toop’s Quartz! Recordings in Papau New Guinea / Venezuela, Jim Nollman singing with Turkeys or Masaaki Takano’s recordings of water, it’s somehow VITAL that they exist.. (NM / NM)

Tracklist

Duets
A1 Fogg Dam 8:59
A2 Ingham 7:08
A3 Ococingo 10:26
Toads
B Palenque 26:55