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There are strange albums of electronica and then there are strange albums of electronica. Fluorescent belongs to the second category. Rasmus B. Lunding, from Denmark, likes to be referred to as an "electro-acoustic improviser." Australia's Philip Samartzis prefers the tag "sound artist." The result of their collaboration puzzles both the mind and the dictionary. The music sounds improvised or maybe born in improvisation and reassembled in the studio, but free improv this is not. Yet, the computer processing doesn't hold on to the spotlight either, making Fluorescent an awkward, highly original hybrid. Bits of electric guitar surface in many of these 11 short pieces, along with field recordings and electronics.
Each track is sculpted like an electro-acoustic piece (sections with different moods and colors, a certain plasticity and spatiality of sound), but feels more raw and immediate. Because of the guitar's presence, one is tempted to think of Asmus Tietchens or Rafael Toral, but this music belongs to another realm, closer to labelmate Candlesnuffer. And don't let the techno leanings of "Øjet Giver Kødet Smag" fool you; it leaves almost as quickly as it came.
Difficult and uncompromising, Fluorescent requires many listens in order to let the listener in. Even then, some questions as to the what, how, and why remain unanswered.
François Couture - All Music Guide
download Figen-mund.mp3 (2.6mb)
The first thing that seems to strike most people about this record is the art. The red-hot faces having a pash, the red-hot fire, the cartoon octopus giving you a wave on the cover, and the burning ear on the CD itself. That, and the fact that it is (in part) by one of Australia's reputedly most austere sound artists, Philip Samartzis. The playful humour of the artwork-which seems to be a bit of a Dr Jim thing-is at once descriptive and potentially misleading. Certainly a playful and noisy palette of sounds is used, but the form lacks the level of hysterical drama one may expect from such a gaudy introduction.
Prior exposure to the works of Rasmus Lunding (a Danish composer and artist/researcher for Lego Lab, University of Aarhus) has been through 2 recent events in Melbourne. In one of the Five Layers of Soil & Existence at Immersion 1 and a performance in the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in 2001 it was Lunding's performance that really caught my attention. This was a dense noise-scape that had his programmed Lego toys (a playful mutation of Felix Hess' Moving Sound Creatures) engaging in a sonic environment alongside electric guitar and lap-top. Despite the obvious levels of artificiality (FX processing, etc) the music possessed certain formal qualities (of density, movement, non-musical logic) that left me likening it more to an alien field recording than a performance.
