Have you noticed the fairytale kind of music that is present in different forms relatively new electronic music? The most obvious example of this is the post-idm music, gathered around labels like Shaped Harmonics, City Centre Offices, Couchblip!, Neo Ouija and artists like EU, Novel 23, Pellarin, Bola and others. They release melody based music, various melodies mixed with atmospheric backgrounds. It’s almost expected that they achieve the fairytale music quality within their melodic musical platform. But of course it demands a great talent and a great sense for melody.
On the other side, there are some artists who make different experimental kinds of music without melody and manage to achieve similar fairytale atmosphere. Formatt is one of them. Also Phluidbox is one of them, and his music can be seen as ambient-micro-dub, at least that’s how Phluidbox’s MP3-EP released on the mp3 label Stasisfield sounds to me. Or maybe it’s a mix of micro-dubby clicks and IDM. However, there is also one Phluidbox track from the Spa.rk EP, this track is called “Fahleng” and it’s a pretty thick mix of atmospheric dub and IDM. You can’t go much further than that. It’s interesting if you try to find similar fairytale qualities in some of the more experimental forms of music and sound. Like Sawako for example, her music can be heavily abstract and experimental, or even Twine’s album, Recorder (Bip_Hop); There is a story inside their music, that music goes beyond the simple sound-information you get while listening to Pan Sonic or Snd. This Formatt EP goes beyond too. There are 6 tracks on the 3″ Extended CD and the music is not heavily experimental. It varies from quiet miniature sound designs to loose atmospheres and precise rhythm structures that are always fractured, put in different contexts or organized randomly with other random sounds.
Or simply put, Formatt’s music is a hidden treasure. Like when you get some very worthy bonus in the infamous PC game Heroes Of Might And Magic. There are lots of fine details in the graphic design and the whole iconography of that game, and there are also lots of very important details in the music of this Extended EP. Recall the video for Bjork’s “Human Behavior” song, well, Formatt’s musical approach could be a great soundtrack for those kinds of strange and tricky but still accessible stories. Extended is quite simply fairytale music for those interested in something a little obscure.
