Fievel Is Glauque sign to Fat Possum
FIEVEL IS GLAUQUE
ANNOUNCES SIGNING TO FAT POSSUM
SHARES DOUBLE SINGLE "I’M SCANNING THINGS I CAN’T SEE" AND "DARK DANCING"
Fievel Is Glauque, an international band composed of bandleader and keyboardist Zach Phillips (US), singer Ma Clément (France via Belgium), and a rotating cast of musicians spread out across the globe, announce their signing to Fat Possum. With the announcement, the band shares a double single, "I’m Scanning Things I Can’t See" and "Dark Dancing." Watch the music video directed by Joey Agresta here.
Both new songs were written and recorded in April 2023 by Zach Phillips and Ma Clément during a writing trip for the band, quickly recorded analog to a Tascam 424 Portastudio. These ‘demos’ were meant to capture the moment of creation, with the later intention to rework these compositions as full band recordings. Although the duo is conservative about releasing from their now-voluminous library of hundreds of songs recorded in the studio, in rehearsals, and in multitrack demos like these, they felt these two recordings captured the raw life of the compositions as they were being written.
Last year, Fievel shared their debut studio album Flaming Swords.The album received glowing praise from, Pitchfork, NYT, NPR, Paste, Bandcamp, Stereogum, FADER and more. They also went on tour with Stereolab, for which BrooklynVegan commended the group as being “complimentary openers with their skronky brand of jazz pop."
Our writing's always ongoing, embodied, mystic, practicable, but its representation via recordings is unstable, scattershot, occult, impossible – maze-like motivation means dead ends abound. So, 100+ studio-recorded songs lie dormant, and when we attempt to wake them, often they beg for continued rest. But then! Sometimes the four-track cassette recorder beckons: "Just make a watercolor, you little fools. imagine Pessoa writing in his kitchen with a pen malformed, half-broken. Follow me, hurry, outrun yourselves. Yes, make me laugh!" - Zach Phillips
Le 4-track était une sirène. Son corps plastique et menu dissimulé mais présent dans le studio a émis une vibration irrésistible. Fébriles et hilares, emportés par l'empressement, l'envie de tout enregistrer très vite, maintenant ou nous nous tairons à jamais. Comme un chant d'oiseau. - Ma Clément
Fievel Is Glauque’s rising popularity has been as organic as it has been accidental. An international band composed of American bandleading keyboardist Zach Phillips, French singer Ma Clément, and a rotating cast of musicians spread out across the globe, they released a Bandcamp compilation album of live mono cassette recordings titled God's Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess on New Years Day of 2021 with only a single Instagram post to promote it. Similar to most releases you might find from Zach Phillips’ former label OSR Tapes or his approximately fifty other albums under various names (see Blanche Blanche Blanche), it received some cult fandom, but Fievel Is Glauque was pushed to a larger audience through a Bandcamp Daily article and Needle Drop coverage. Gradually, through word of mouth, God's Trashmen Sent To Right The Mess has gone on to sell thousands of copies, and the band’s reach has continued to grow. This led them to their first US tour as support for Stereolab ahead of any proper studio recordings.
Zach Phillips and Ma Clément met while Zach was staying in Brussels, Belgium, where a mutual friend connected them in a bid to convince Zach to make an album during his stay there. While on route to meet, Zach hit his head on a street pole and was in need of care. As a sign of fate, Ma was also a trained nurse and was able to help clear him of any severe consequences of concussion. After a short practice the following day, the two fell into working together and gradually found themselves in a years-long musical partnership.
During the pandemic, Zach moved to Brussels to focus on the band and the two released the mono live compilation God's Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess. Whereas that compilation was primarily composed of Zach’s writing, Flaming Swords sees Phillips and Clément working together as a composing duo. Adapting to a strongly enforced curfew and limited social contact, the two focused heavily on the writing of Flaming Swords over the next few months. Lyrically switching between English and Ma’s native tongue of French, the lyrics are created in an unusual process involving psychoanalytic dialectic, automatic writing, and interlinguistic translation of apparent gibberish. “Musically, Ma directed melodic impetus and I directed harmonic and rhythmic framing. Lyrically, we fought and embraced our initial impulses alternatingly; above all, we tried to trust and document the psychodynamics of the process itself rather than attempting to express concrete, prefab emotional or intellectual messaging. This approach to writing is intended to promote poetry while avoiding alibis and the hall-of-mirrors reproduction of excessive self-identification,” Zach comments. Just before Zach returned to the US to resume living in Brooklyn, he and Ma put together a septet and Flaming Swords was recorded live in its entirety over the evening of August 29th, 2021.
Painting by Annie Loucka, Design by Ma Clément
Credits:
Ma Clément: vocals
Zach Phillips: piano, clavinet, bass, drums, rhodes, recording
written by Phillips/Clément and recorded to Tascam 424
April 2023, Brooklyn NY
Ryan Power: mixing
Joe LaPorta: mastering
FIEVEL IS GLAUQUE
