Fievel Is Glauque new album Rong Weicknes on Fat Possum
FIEVEL IS GLAUQUE
ANNOUNCES FORTHCOMING ALBUM RONG WEICKNES RELEASED 25th OCTOBER OCTOBER VIA FAT POSSUM
SHARES “AS ABOVE SO BELOW” - LISTEN HERE
"Fievel Is Glauque's music is baffling and eclectic, even at its most simplistic." - NPR "heady but not stuffy, precise but not rigid, dense but not cluttered, and contemplative but not lacking good humor." - Pitchfork "utterly charming nonchalance - The New York Times
Today, Fievel Is Glauque announces their highly anticipated sophomore album, Rong Weicknes, out October 25 via Fat Possum. Along with the announcement, Fievel Is Glauque shares “As Above So Below,” a track whose propulsive, upbeat pop songcraft belies unusual harmonic touches and unique, uncanny post-production, making it one of their most intricate and catchy songs to date. Listen here. Watch the music video here
Zach Phillips on As Above So Below: “This phrase comes from the Emerald Tablet, a 9th century hermetic text foundational for alchemy and later occultist movements; it refers to the reciprocality between heaven and earth, the knowable and unknowable, the here and the hereafter. Sounds heady, right? But as usual, the title came out of nowhere, gleaned from phonetic murmurings during the writing process, and Ma and I laughed a lot making this one... Normally we write linearly, improvising bit by bit using only piano and voice, but we ended up constructing As Above out of scattered song sections we’d recorded with my laptop mic in free software over a loop from a ‘70s drum sampling record, which drummer Gaspard Sicx and percussionist Daniel Rossi reinterpreted in the studio. After writing upwards of 35 songs over the course of a couple 2023 writing trips, we were surprised to knock out probably our most conventional tune yet. The lyrics could be said to both troll and co-sign typical pop lyricism. Thom Gill’s blazing guitar solo gets me every time... When [music video director] Joey Agresta asked what I was imagining visually, all I could muster was, “the Sound of Music, Ma spinning in a field, ‘90s ‘positivity,’ Dido...
Fievel Is Glauque is an international collaboration between New York-based keyboardist and bandleader Zach Phillips and Brussels-based singer and performer Ma Clément. The Rong Weicknes band is an octet lineup
of musicians from the US, Belgium and Canada, featuring: Thom Gill (guitar), Logan Kane (bass), Daniel Rossi (percussion), André Sacalxot (saxophone, flute), Gaspard Sicx (drums), and Chris Weisman (guitar, electric sitar).
Finding themselves in the novel position of having, for the first time, more than a single day to record an album and a label to record it for, Zach and Ma put together a band and brought them to live and record at The Outlier Inn, a farm and music studio in upstate New York, from July 27 to August 2, 2023. With time in the studio to experiment, Fievel Is Glauque finally had the resources to try an old idea Phillips had never brought to fruition: a recording approach he calls “live in triplicate.” First laying down a foundational take, then a duplicate take on top of it, and finally an improvisatory, antagonistic take, the octet exclusively played live together without using a click track, so that each layer of performance features tiny rhythmic variations and imperfections, both intentional and not.
While the tracking sessions were infused with camaraderie and spontaneity, the post-production process proved to be challenging and lengthy. Because of its unusual tracking methodology, Phillips and the album’s recording, mixing, and mastering engineer Steve Vealey faced the task of laboriously sculpting dense mixes by subtractively editing the band’s three simultaneous layers of live performance. The result is a dynamic sound that balances intricacy with airiness, as melodies leap across the stereo field and instruments unexpectedly swell before retreating.
As for the album’s unusual name, Phillips cites the classic St. Paul adage, "when I am weak, then I am strong,” which came up in discussions with Ma as they improvised the title track one afternoon in Brussels. The quote had dogged him for some years, leading to a eureka moment: “But what if it’s the wrong weakness?” In true Fievel fashion, the fractured spelling comes directly from Clément’s lyrics notebook as she phonetically transcribed those words, her second-language skills exhausted from a gig the night before.
Rong Weicknes marks a significant step forward for the band, advancing Phillips and Clément's songwriting style into a cohesive and recognizable sound. A milestone in Phillips' extensive background in underground experimental music and rich history of collaboration, the album represents a confident statement that invites listeners to engage with its complexities. Rong Weicknes is the result of a band using their hard-won resources to take a major risk and try something new. It’s obtuse, maximalist, imperfect, and, above all, refreshing.
Artwork by Leomi Sadler
TRACKLIST:
1. Hover
2. As Above So Below
3. Would You Rather?
4. Love Weapon
5. Rong Weicknes
6. Toute Suite
7. It's So Easy
8. I'm Scanning Things I Can't See
9. Kayfabe
10. My Oubliette
11. Dark Dancing
12. Great Blues
13. Transparent
14. Eternal Irises
15. Haut Contre Bas
FIEVEL IS GLAUQUE
