Bengalfuel conjures a world where rather than some omninous singularity, man, machine and nature sync up with wit and empathy.
Prettiest little mini-disc set ever, thanks to dandy packaging by the label featuring the floral photography of Joe LiTrenta, who is also a prolific video and film director. He and Lou Dibenedetto claim to make music to appease souls who have passed but remain restive. They began recording the series in a haunted house and have since moved to the shores of Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey, on former Native American land.
So two very visual artists (those cover snaps are worthy of the Royal Horticultural Society´s annual wall calender) shoulder the task of creating invisible entertainment for invisible beings. There are an awful lot of titles which refer to ghosts. The very first one on the very first disc of this quartet, Sprague, telegraphs this ectoplasmic intent with its title, “Vaporized,” and a spooky mood certainly is mediated by tracks like “Spectacles” and especially “Teals,” with its melodramatic, chain-dragging limp across dusty wooden floorboards.
But like their posies, Bengalfuel‘s electronica conveys a wide variety of moods, colours and dispositions. Numerous tracks exude a greeting-the-morning-sun elation—big, bright and happy to be alive, like the inaptly named “Ghost Forest,” “Braindit (Cathedral),” and “Spence’s.” The duo also gladly cranks up exotic, rhythmic dance tracks, like “Polo Technician (Rat Trash Mix),” which could be an imagined Amerindian raindance, and “Mad Daddy Clawbone,” captivating, beefy dub techno. “People Wincing” is actually a cleverly appropriate title for the second track on Lowe, in which the duo break out a kind of robo-headbanging, electro-Cossack dance. Out of the corollas of those attractive flowers comes a unique ambient voice, too, drone and repetition you can almost hum along to. And despite the changes of pace, each track slopes nicely into the next.
Bengalfuel conjures a world where rather than some omninous singularity, man, machine and nature sync up with wit and empathy.
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