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fake the facts: soundtrack


fake the facts (gustafsson, siewert, dieb13): soundtrack , lp and cd, trost 2014



reviews:
allaboutjazz.com
badalchemy.de
dalstonsound.wordpress.com
freistil.klingt.org
multikultiproject.blogspot.co.at
www.freejazzblog.org



allaboutjazz.com review:

Stripped to its core, music is communication. It is the accompaniment to life's movie. The first fabulists, our cavemen ancestors probably invented music by imitating the sounds of nature, such as bird calls, wolf howls, and the patter of rain on the cave's entrance. The pleasure delivered by that experience caused several members of the cavemen's tribe to give up hunting-and-gathering for a steady gig as musicians. Fast forward twenty thousand years and with noted music in place, our Bird, Charlie Parker, a bluesman, Howlin' Wolf, and the rainmaker, Buddy Rich became the 20th storytellers

Music without notation, free music, is probably the closest listeners can get to man's earliest performances. Saxophonist Mats Gustafsson has always had the talent for stripping sound down to its essence, be it through the blast of a saxophone or as he has wont to do of late, toil in the world of electronics and noise. He has performed and recorded with the king of Japanese noise, Merzbow and with the likes of David Grubbs and Thurston Moore.

In the trio Fake The Facts, he has found his band of cavemen. Dieb13, aka Dieter Kovacic is a turntable artist (not a DJ) that has contributed sound to Gustafsson's Swedish Azz band and projects by British saxophonist John Butcher. Guitarist Martin Siewert also eschews the language of his instrument for an abstract primeval sound.

The trio's previous efforts include the self-titled (Fake) the Facts (Editions Mego, 2011) and a 7" Record Store Day release (Trost, 2013).

This session, from January, 2013 is less noisy than their previous efforts, or maybe it just contains less noise. The three storytellers describe, not the elements of nature but the nature of electronics. Their instruments are driven back to the stone age where analog replaces digital. Saxophones are for breathy ambiance, guitars for hum and feedback, and turntables forgo beats for the rumble. Where Gustafsson blows his horn, it is more a circular breath of a gurgling brook and Siewert's guitar describes nerve impulses of the brain. Dieb13's samples chronicle the world, not the caveman's mother earth, but the modern electric cosmos.

Track Listing: Socks Full Of Sawdust; Polyphony Of A Metropolis; Crazy Mixed Up Pup; Dance Your Cares Away; The Great Fire Of London; Do Electric Moths Dream Of Light Bulbs.

Personnel: Mats Gustafsson: saxophones, shaker, saxophone-generated ambient noise; dieb13: turntables, klopfer; Martin Siewert: guitar, ring stinger, electronics.

Record Label: Trost Records
--Mark Corroto

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badalchemy.de review:

Alternativ zu dieser Alternative bietet sich FAKE THE FACTS an mit Sound - track (TR 129). Mats Gustafsson an Saxophonen, Dieb13 an Turntables und Martin Siewert an Gitarre & Electronics improvisieren mit Geknister und Krimskrams, mit Noisestenographie, Gitarrenkürzeln, aber auch -eruptionen, mit Saxophonzuckungen und Cut-up-Fetzen (von Piano), mit alten Socken und Sägemehl. Saxophon und Gitarre erwecken dabei womöglich falsche Vorstellungen, sie sind hier Tools, die weniger entsprechend ihrer Ausdruckgewohnheiten als ihrer -möglichkeiten eingesetzt werden. Gustafsson zermulmt das Mundstück und dröhnt, Siewert krabbelt und dröhnt, Dieb13 kokelt und knistert. Von der Polyphonie einer Großstadt lernen wir nur die staubigen Ecken kennen, auch wenn die Gitarrensaiten zart ausschwingen. Richtig krass schrappeln, zwirbeln, ploppen und knurren er und Gustafsson bei 'Crazy Mixed Up Pup', werden aber von Dieb13s Ventilator angesaugt und aufgemischt. Im Kontrast dazu wird 'Dance Your Cares Away' von Gezirpe und zerraspeltem Saxophonsound bestimmt, von hyperaktiven Gesten, Splittern und knatternden Lauten, dem irritierenden Anflug von Gitarrenmelodik entgegnet Siewert selber mit wieder krachigen Einwürfen. Ein Feuersturm führt ein in 'The Great Fire Of London', brüllendes Saxophon und Gitarrendetonationen schüren das Inferno, wobei Gustafsson auch einen fast schon hymnischen Gesang anstimmt, allerdings de profundis aus Basstiefen. Die letzten Minuten sind dann nur noch ein elegischer Nachhall. Mit 'Do Electric Moths Dream Of Light Bulbs?' wird in Anlehnung an Philip K. Dick in den Schaltkreisen von Androiden gestöbert, elektronische Gespinste und Tüpfelketten fangen ein paar melancholische, verstimmte Pianonoten auf. (Von Gustafsson auf den Klappen simulierte) Mottenflügel flattern um Saxophonlaute, bis Piano und Elektronoise zur finalen Implosion zoomen. Bis aber solche Musik die von Vangelis ablöst, werden wohl noch einige Schafe ge... äh ...schoren.
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dalstonsound.wordpress.com review:

Soundtrack , as you might expect, is not a collection of tunes. Its richly textured electro-acoustic improvisations are a rawer version of music you might expect to find on the Erstwhile label, home to minimalist avant-jazz including the odd collaborative album by fact-faking Viennese turntablist Dieter Kovačič, a.k.a. Dieb13, and latter-day Radian guitarist Martin Siewert, but rather too refined, perhaps, for a noise hound like Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson. Having said which, Soundtrack (Trost) ranks among the Thing and Fire! frontman’s subtler outings.
Comprising six pieces, all between six and ten minutes long and all idiosyncratically titled, Soundtrack constitutes a refinement of music on the trio’s first record, (fake) the facts (2011, Editions Mego), the title of which Gustafsson, Kovačič and Siewert evidently adopted as a group name. All three exercise self-abnegation throughout, creating music of absorbing if fleetingly, jarringly violent painterly abstraction.
On Soundtrack‘s first cut, “Socks Full of Sawdust”, Dieb13 begins by whipping snatches of sampled piano through a base-layer of small metallic scraping sounds, and his companions’ glitchy electrical dis/connections and brief saxophonic phuts. At midpoint the trio reel this microsound mesh in to a near-silence of amplifier hum, allowing plenty of space into which to discharge less tethered energies. They sally but constantly pull back, eventually playing in small snatches of raw and found sound barbed with twangs of guitar.
There’s no telling what the rapid flutter of pops that start “Polyphony of a Metropolis” is until Siewert trips a small sustain. Gustafsson adds runnels of plosives then works up a chewy line through circular breathing, and Siewert generates some electronics that fill out the backdrop. Or maybe it’s Dieb13, since the electronic shimmer sustains in an ambient, almost Fenneszian way behind more open-string touches, then deepens to an industrial hum behind Gustafsson’s simple serial sax notes.
The saxophonist grunts away on baritone as Siewert gets all lacerative at the start of “Crazy Mixed Up Pup”, and gets properly blustery before both fall back to sound-spot stippling. Dieb13 draws them both out again with subtle and unfathomable soundscaping, and both get briefly frictional, but gradually everyone settles down and for the most part this piece is about as lulled and lulling as ambient/industrial electro-acoustic noise gets, until the inevitable spike in accumulated tension at the end.
“Dance Your Cares Away” is a title to raise a wry smile, unless stridulant pointillism is your idea of good time music. And it gets less rhythmic as it goes on. Siewert plays some relatively orthodox avant-guitar, with some really lovely filigree touches, while Gustafsson huffs away and Dieb13, sonically, remains the mystery man: there’s little overt turntablism here; perhaps he’s concentrating on his klopfer, whatever that might be (these photos on Kovačič’s website seem to show it).
More literally titled than “Dance”, “The Great Fire of London” begins with Gustafsson, sounding anguished, wailing, apparently, next to a roaring afterburner, while Siewert plays abrasive licks and Dieb13 mixes in the sound of pneumatic drills. That bracing cacophony subsides within minutes, and the trio lick their wounds amid an almost torpid postlude of hazy smouldering.
“Do Electric Moths Dream of Lightbulbs”, with its Philip K. Dick-punning title, starts off as dusk-y insectoid hush, a near-silence punctuated by what might be tentative inside-piano chimes and distant, ethereal muttering which wafts faintly from a gradually accreting and coarsening patina of sound. Siewert’s de-tuning glissandos and Dieb13′s samples of tentative pianism near the conclusion give the listener some purchase, and Gustafsson, too, blows some almost-solid phrases, but the album’s last sound is a elliptical electronic tweak that whisks the listener into the void of silence. This track alone could give you the heebie-jeebies, and I ain’t talking Little Richard.
Personneli: Mats Gustafsson saxophones, saxophone-generated ambient noise, shaker; Dieb13 turntables, klopfer; Martin Siewert guitar, ring stinger (“fuzz/ring modulator on steroids*”), electronics.

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freistil.klingt.org review:

FAKE THE FACTS
soundtrack

Nach dem selbstbetitelten Debütalbum (mego 2011) Führt die zweite Veröffentlichung dieses eher losen Trios insofern in die Irre, als es zum Titel Soundtrack keinen dazupassenden Film gibt. In die Irre zu führen, gehört überhaupt zu den Vorlieben von dieb13 alias Takeshi Fumimoto alias Dieter Kovacic.
Martin Siewert und Mats Gustaffson schließen sich, so hat es den Anschein, dieser Irreführung gerne an, immerhin nennt man sich ja Fake The Facts. Die Bandbreite dieser Tonträgerin ist jedenfalls enorm, sie reicht von nervösem Gefrickel über ausladende Solostatements und von Schönheit prallen gefäßen bis hin zu stillen, hypnotischen Klangflächen, gipfelnd im langen finalen Track mit dem misteriösen (irreführenden?) Titel Do Electric Moths Dream of Light Bulbs?, auf dem Samples eines windschiefen Klaviers beachtlichen Zauber auf das offene Ohr ausüben. Drei Tüftler sind hier am Werk, die allesamt für sich, in vielen anderen Konstellationen und zusammengefasst im Trio offene Spielräume sowohl vorfinden als auch ausgiebig und offensichtlich lustvoll nutzen. In ästhetischer Hinsicht dürften sich für diesen Soundtrack genau die Richtigen gefunden haben. Für alle Beteiligten, allen voran die Hörerinnen, ein reiner Glücksfall.
-- felix

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multikultiproject.blogspot.co.at review:

To nie pierwsze nagranie tego tria - Mats Gustafsson, dieb13 oraz Martin Siewert mają już w dorobku jedną płytę wydaną w austriackiej oficynie Mego. Tamten materiał był pozszywany z występów na żywo oraz zapisu spotkania w studiu nagraniowym. Druga płyta w ich dorobku to już realizacja czysto studyjna. Konceptualna, w pierwszym wrażeniu nawet eksperymentalna, muzyka tria bazuje w dużej mierze na postrzępionych, rozedrganych frazach saksofonu Matsa Gustafssona i równie porwanej albo sprzęganej gitary Martina Siewerta. Wszystko inne właściwie jest tylko dodatkiem albo służy przetworzeniu tych dwóch elementów. Sporo tu mikrotoniki, chociaż tropów, i inspiracji jest bardzo, bardzo wiele. Jan Jelinek i jego gęste niczym zupa elektroniczne preparacje, drony, free improv, noise... Zaskakujące jest jednak to, że pomimo wszystkich tych zastrzeżeń i słów zawartych w opisie projektu - "konceptualny", "eksperymentalny", "porwany", "przetworzenie", i tak dalej, muzyka w moim osobistym odbiorze ma zdecydowanie medytacyjny i ilustracyjny charakter. Nie porywa skumulowaną energią, nie uwodzi pięknem i harmonią, nie tworzy zwartej, dynamicznie brutalnej ściany dźwięku. A jednak uwodzi, sięga gdzieś głębiej, odwołuje się do nie bardzo często używanych w dzisiejszym powierzchownym świecie obszarów naszej świadomości i wrażliwości. I daje poczucie oddechu, jest - w moim odczuciu - tchnieniem jakiejś otwartej, wolnej przestrzeni. Cudowne granie wymagające jednak otwartości i skupienia. autor: Wawrzyniec Mąkinia
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www.freejazzblog.org review:

When I read novels I often do this with music on, usually just to have a constant background noise which helps me not to lose my concentration since I am easily distracted by other noises - from adjacent apartments, for example. At the moment I am reading Donna Tart’s new novel “The Goldfinch” and lately I chose Fake the Fact’s new album “Soundtrack” as background music. Parts of the novel take place in Las Vegas, especially on the outskirts of this city. There is a passage which describes the place like this:
“I was not aware quite how eerie Canyon Shadows got at its farthest reaches; a toy town, dwindling out at desert’s edge, under menacing skies. Most of the houses looked as if they had never been lived in. Others – unfinished – half raw-egded windows without glass in them; they were covered with scaffolding and grayed with blown sand, with piles of concrete and yellowing constructing material out front. The boarded-up windows gave them a blind, battered, uneven look, as of faces beaten and damaged. As we walked, the air of abandonment grew more and more disturbing, as if we were roaming some planet depopulated by radiation and disease.”
After a while, “Soundtrack” did indeed become a soundtrack to the pictures my imagination produced while I was reading – in this case to a somewhat David-Lynch-like film.
In the context of this “film in my head”, a track like Polyphony of a Metropolis functions as a close up of the life in the sand surrounding Las Vegas, the bugs crawling busily (guitar), the snakes winding their way through the deserted estates (baritone sax), the sun (computer sounds) burning down relentlessly on the whole scene.
The musicians (Mats Gustafsson on saxophones, Dieb13 on turntables, Martin Siewert on guitar, and electronics) are like cameramen, bringing to life this scenery with the possibilities of analog electronic sounds. The opening track, Socks full of Sawdust, is like an echo of a lost civilization – full of tattered guitar static mixed with electric rubble, vinyl scratching and bar piano samples – but the hectic saxophone interspersions already cast the shadow of the future disaster.
As usual when he is more into sound explorations, Gustafsson hardly blows his horn; it is more of a dark gurgling trickle, while Siewert's guitar sounds like nerve impulses of the brain. Meanwhile, Dieb13 maps an electric universe – it‘s a cosmic playground of sounds stripped down to its bare bones. “Soundtrack” is indeed cinematographic music, in a fascinating and horrific sense.

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