(May 2009) Mike Fazio conceived of ÆRA as a personal take on symphonic music merged with the art and the literary worlds. The art/literary element can be seen minimally in arcane presentational trappings, but it’s musical matter that matters here. A subtle Eastern European dark-night-of-the-soul undercurrent runs through ÆRA; under influence of late-modernist composers – Górecki (check), Pärt (check), Penderecki (check), Kancheli (check) – the prevailing ambient drone of Fazio’s guitar manipulations, familiar from outings under the cloak of orchestramaxfieldparrish, gets a headier, more mysterious, flavour. The ‘X presents Y’ billing is comparable to the Coil presents… projects: where musical expression emerges in a slightly different voice from an artist’s customary articulation, yet is recognisably of the same blood. So ÆRA bespeaks another place while vibrating with a resonance recognisable from Fazio’s ‘parrish. A double-set from what seems an even more hermetic vehicle than OMP, this ÆRA is one of stern synthetic driftscapes, with sounds mainly seeking upper spheres – of the ær rather than the earth. Long wisps and swathes of tonefloat are drawn out languorously arcing over tracts alternately teeming and evacuated, finely flowing from a sonic palette deployed for exploration of memory and dreams, of ritual and forgotten memories, scenes found not deleted – recovered from the There and Then of a Future-past hybrid projection.
So, artfully navigating the interstices between experimental ambient and a distillate of neo-classical, Disc 1, To The Last Man, tends to the melodramatic and dense, while Index Of Dreaming to the oneiromantic and spatial. “Elegæa” initiates the ritual, wispy atmospherics laced with orchestral infusions setting in train a multi-hued journey attended by dark portent. “To Touch The Sky” bristles with micro-chatter and campanology, tone-whorls over dark drone and post-Gothic colourings. “Ennoæ” injects percussive patterns into the synthetic base, vague echoes of Steve Roach emerging. At other points Fazio displays affiliations with other iconic ambient/space/drone artists. On “Out Of Many, One” synth sonorities suggest ’70s Kosmische – Klaus Schulze, vintage TD. Disc 1 spans organic environmental to outer space cosmicity, taking in various stops on the La Monte Young-Phil Niblock-Fripp/Eno-Robert Rich line. Where the first CD is questing and restless in experiment, the second is more restrained and stay-at-home. On the second, “1/1” opens in titular hommage to Music for Airports (note similar parallels in the disc’s nomenclature, Index Of Dreaming – cf. Eno/Fripp’s “An Index of Metals”). The extended “1/3” grows to epic proportions through fields of static and chimes – a lulling paean of heady post-industrial vapours, swells and billows. This ÆRA bestrides musical eras effortlessly and engrossingly.
To The Last Man/Index Of Dreaming is out now on Faith Strange.
