14/01/2016 – Fissures-Fête d’été (2016)

Field recordings never sounded so good!

Fête d’été, roughly translated Summer Party, by Fissures AKA Ludovic Medery is a rare find. Everything you need to know about the album is displayed in the cover art. On the surface it looks like an old Polaroid that has been put through a mangle, fallen out of a coat pocket, been trampled on by an unsuspecting crowd, then picked up and cherished by someone, only to find its way as an album cover. This is exactly what the music contained sounds like. Ambient noise, at various locations, has been recorded and through thorough digital manipulation, live instrumentation and a vivid imagination a version of reality that never existed has been produced.

At times Fissures is remarkable, and at others unlistenable, but pervading it is a sense of “Is this real?” and “Did this happen?” The answer is no, but that doesn’t take anything from the remarkable field recordings that have been given an Avant-Garde buffing to create something almost other worldly.

Essentially what Medery has done is create a piece of music that doesn’t really contain music. Through lurid soundscapes and ambient workouts you are reminded of past situations and your own view on them, gives the emotional outcome to his work. It’s very clever. Fissures plays with ideas of composition, and styles. One moment it’s full on experimental, another moment it’s just ambient noises, which an underlying theme of Musique Concrète underpinning the whole thing.

Bravo Medery, Bravo!