Finger paints multi-dimensional worlds from lo-fi ambient drones, sun-bleached synth-iness, with various infusions: low cello tides, percussive clusters swarming spectrally round piano motifs, techno tropes slowed down, stretched and cut’n’shut with free jazz blowback, even snatches of talk rendered into song textures imparting a surreal skew.
Alice Coltrane, Slayer, Spacemen 3, Arthur Russell, Butthole Surfers, Slint, Lee Scratch Perry, Charles Mingus, Disco Inferno, Sun Ra, Eric Dolphy, Broadcast, Labradford, Laurie Anderson, Pharaoh Sanders, Fugazi, Suicide, Flying Saucer Attack, The Frogs, Frank Zappa, Bardo Pond, Autechre, Philippe Sarde, George Michael, Frédéric Chopin, Terry Riley, Gescom, John Zorn, Morton Feldman, Talk Talk, Gas, Drexciya and Oneohtrix Point Never. That all? Norway, baby. Just some of the avowed influences of Benjamin Finger, whose six albums in as many years have drawn on multiple voices while holding on to an organizing musical intelligence to prevent flunking collage with failed soundclash and patchwork pastiche.
On Amorosa Sensitiva Finger paints multi-dimensional worlds from lo-fi ambient drones, sun-bleached synth-iness, with various infusions: low cello tides, percussive clusters swarming spectrally round piano motifs, techno tropes slowed down, stretched and cut’n’shut with free jazz blowback, even snatches of talk rendered into song textures imparting a surreal skew. It all starts out nice and gentle with opener “Headspincrawl,” albeit driven by a pulsating occluded rhythm, as if of Eluvium with a Marsen Jules chaser it had drunk, with even some Biospherean structural life thrown in (Mick Buckingham, Fluid Radio). “When Face Was Face” sees those wide-ranging influences come on more directly, dark jazz cadences reminding of the eponymous ensemble. “Waltz in Clay” also has a jazz tinge, here with modern classical. Piano and strings are everywhere stretched out and awash with floating flotsam, while “Whirlbrainpoolin” is most off-kilter, turning into freestyle jazzbo wig-out with Ayler-esque blowing and jittery percussion. Very fertile and all that, but, a bit too hyper for its own sake. If preference may be expressed, it would be for the likes of “Bum Finger Notes,” ‘going back to Satie via Pierre Henry Schaeffer,’ (Mischa Mathys, The Formant), more on piano and minimal soundscape lines, brass braying on back burner. “Darnskullgreyness” does well to return to a droney experimental ambient keynote for closure.
Amorosa Sensitiva is a free-floating set that will appeal to free-floaters, hosted by the unfamiliar Blue Tapes and X-Ray Records, with Finger assisted by Are Watle on saxophone/additional guitar and the voice of Inga-Lill Farstad. Mastered by James Plotkin, and available on frosted clear vinyl 180g heavyweight LP in screenprinted PVC wallet + download.
Amorosa Sensitiva is available on Blue Tapes and X-Ray Records.
