Zach Phillips (Fievel is Glauque / Blanche Blanche Blanche / OSR Tapes)

Anyone into this guy? I've fallen hard for Fievel is Glauque's "God's Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess": lo-fi jazz-prog pop with unusual song structures and understated female vocals, sort of puts me in mind of Slapp Happy (if the singer were Belgian as opposed to German). I've been trying to orient myself with regard to the rest of his sprawling discography but I'm finding it a bit daunting…

yes he turns out some mighty fine tuneage. my faves are BBB's "wink..." , "feed a pigeon,, " & the martyr group CDs, but i haven't heard nearly half of what he's done. top tier stuff

this mix of uruguayan music he made is insanely good https://www.mixcloud.com/AltiTuneRadio/zach-phillips-la-loi-uruguay-mix-cosmic-war-mix-alti-tune-2504/

enjoyed this recent interview with him.. heady fellow https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2022/06/10/zach-phillips-the-aquarium-drunkard-interview/

FIG released an incredible EP earlier this year (Aerodynes) and then took it down from the internet a bit later because it's going to be rereleased in a different form. I'd bought it on Bandcamp but didn't download it. It isn't like he hasn't released anything else to tide us over though

ZP is a total genius songwriter/arranger/performer, and I try not to use that word lightly. Slapp Happy is a spot-on reference point for what he does, especially the Fievel Is Glauque and Perfect Angels stuff.

OP I would make it a priority to hear his solo record Feed A Pigeon, Breed A Rat and Perfect Angels' Exit From the Ultra World, both from last year. Blanche Blanche Blanche best explored chronologically imo. His work has only gotten more impressive in recent years; he said in an interview that in 2018 Ryan Power pushed him to start making proper charts for his songs, and I think that has had a major impact on the quality and sophistication of his arrangements.

xp flopson that's a great interview; I love the part where he talks about his songwriting process. His level of erudition is so far above mine I feel like he could throw me with his brain.
This one is good too: http://post-trash.com/news/2022/4/27/fievel-is-glauque-feature-interview

And yeah his mix of Uruguayan music is amazing, a portal to a rich and beautiful universe of music that runs parallel to the MPB of the 70s and 80s.

There's also been some ZP talk/hype on this thread recently: rolling twenty-something RYM/internet stuff like hyperpop, hypnagogic pop, hexD, vaporwave, dungeon synth, cloud rap, nightcore, black midi, future funk, dariacore, seapunk, blown out anime voices, br

Fievel came up on a Spotify algorithm recently and I've been listening non-stop. I love it - strong Blue Gene Tyranny influence to my ears. ZP gives the most abstruse interviews tho.

Yeah, I feel like Blue Gene's "Next Time Might Be Your Time" is the sonic blueprint for Fievel, though Zach's songs are both proggier and more concise than Blue Gene's.

Zach says there are two Fievel full-lengths currently in post-production, one of them possibly a double LP. I saw them live in Brooklyn a few weeks ago playing songs from one of the forthcoming LPs and it was wonderful. Lots to look forward to!

Good egg, him. Just saw Fievel last week opening for Stereolab; he has a perfect way around being a raconteur.

Also caught FIG opening for Stereolab — loved it. One of the cooler, more interesting sounds I've heard in a while.

most recent release–"go down softly"/"the river"–is surprisingly smooth

kind of remarkable he's carved out this moment for himself; he seemed doomed to obscurity for so long

obviously if you haven't heard Wooden Ball you should do so

super stoked for the stereolab/FIG tour. loved the recent BBB "seashells" lp on reading group.

I've been a fan since 2010 so it's kind of weird that he's having a relative moment in the sun with the Fievel album, Stereolab tour, James Acaster interview of all things... It is funny that his break out record was recorded live in mono on cassette, but in a way that's perfect (and possibly in part due to his trolling of the RYM hive mind in regards to it? I don't know)

I've listened to everything, but I'll try to focus on the question and say there's not too much else out there like that Fievel is Glauque album. Fievel being bit "straighter" than a lot of his stuff. I guess partially due to having a more traditionally "slick" singer, a live band and sounding a bit more in some kind of chanson/bossa nova/early-60s-pop tradition.

This recent Blanche Blanche Blanche "live-in-studio" retrospective is closest to Fievel with the instrumentation and kind of works as a nice overview of their stuff from their ~10 albums too. Try "In the Ring":

https://laloi.bandcamp.com/album/fiscal-remote-distilled

Blanche Blanche Blanche I guess were/are kind of his main project. Generally Zach Phillips on various keyboard instruments (more synthy early on, I think deliberately playing it that aspect down later on) with Sarah Smith singing, occasionally with guest musicians (and once with a kind of "rock band" for the whole album ("Breaking Mirrors")). People I've played them too always seem to get put off by the singing approach, but I love it and can't imagine it done any other way (especially early on when they both used to trade lines more).

I know "Blue" Gene Tyranny "Out of the Blue" is an avowed way-point and a bit more audible in the songwriting than some of the stuff he references (Royal Trux, Maher Shalal Hash Baz). For me, the main way I situate his stuff is with the rest of the spicier Vermont/Brattleboro people that he kind of came out of: Chris and Kurt Weisman, Ruth Garbus, Ryan Power... A whole world of amazing music there.

"Wink With Both Eyes" is a kind of the archetypal BBB album I guess but I really like all of them. Try "Mercantile Rugs":

https://blancheblancheblanche.bandcamp.com/album/wink-with-both-eyes-bbb-2

Their latest one "Seashells" is simultaneously more stripped-down, knottier and sillier (and funnier) at the same time. Try "In the Heat of the Moment":

https://blancheblancheblanche.bandcamp.com/album/seashells-bbb-10

Other than BBB, most of everything else he's been involved is under lots of different names - ala The Homosexuals - but is generally solo or at least primarily his songwriting.

This 7" under the name "Lilith Outcome" (only one release so far) would probably appeal to a FIG fan:

https://zachphillips.bandcamp.com/album/lilith-outcome

A lot of the stuff under his own name (particularly anything digital-only) are more like demo collections of song ideas. I'm into all of that stuff as well - and don't really agree with a demo/song dichotomy - but just something to be aware in the face of an imposing amount of music. The latest "Feed a Pigeon..." album being an obvious exception:

https://laloi.bandcamp.com/album/feed-a-pigeon-breed-a-rat

Generally anything pre-2010ish - Horse Boys, Sord, Heat Wilson etc. - is totally different, a lot of noisier tape collage type stuff.

Lots of dense interviews out there (and dense - but fun - music/lyrics in general) that read in a way that kind of betray what I believe is/was his day job in the American legal system...

So much to dig into and I'm glad it's getting out there beyond the 20 people that used to buy OSR tapes!

Add in both of his albums with CE Schneider (Kevin Barnes' partner and bandmate!) - they're quieter and more restrained than usual but there's magic in those murmurings

https://ceschneidertopical.bandcamp.com/album/look-who-showed-up-out-here

https://ceschneidertopical.bandcamp.com/album/antifree

(but that's a fabulous overview linee and plenty in there I need to check out still too...)

I also caught them with Stereolab and found them intriguing but difficult to parse. It was almost like what if jazzy Stereolab kept wandering off into microtonality and skronk improv. I'll definitely explore further, although I'm under the impression that their recorded output is not particularly representative.

xpost

Oh I *love* the CE Schneider Topical/Jepeto Solutions/Locate S,1 records too, The only reason I didn't mention them is that ZP was definitely in more of a supporting role with those and they're 90% Christina's songs. I would definitely put her stuff in my Brattleboro pantheon.

*

It struck me that on top of all of the names, there's definitely a bit of Bandcamp clutter but 95% of it all appears to be consolidated in the Zach Phillips one if people want a central source:

https://zachphillips.bandcamp.com/

(FYI there's a few non-ZP, stray OSR Tapes releases at the end - everything after Horse Boys' I)

Thanks linee, that's exactly the kind of informed overview I was looking for. I've been digging into Blanche Blanche Blanche – the vocals did put me off at first but I'm getting used to them. "Fiscal Remote Distilled" sounds really good - at times it kind of reminds me of The Waitresses?

New Fievel, from Flaming Swords LP, out Nov. 25. He don't miss:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7ytbH3KmRA

aw yeah

Love it

at some point he had the whole OSR catalog up on bandcamp for peanuts, i am still revisiting and finding good stuff years later

Just realized that's Fievel's arm on the left on the Flaming Swords cover lol

been listening to this on repeat; love how it keeps churning itself up into a frenzy. that daphne and celeste/max tundra line i've probably quoted on here before comes to mind - "hyperventilating in the factory of sound".

looks like Jake Tobin did the striking cover art. only one passing mention of him in the ILX archives so i''ll place this here as a PSA:

https://jaketobin.bandcamp.com/album/third-and-fourth-thoughts

loved the recent BBB "seashells" lp on reading group.

Their latest one "Seashells" is simultaneously more stripped-down, knottier and sillier (and funnier) at the same time.

Gotta echo the love for Seashells. I can't think of another album that's made me laugh out loud as much as this one. Totally unhinged lyrical brilliance/hilarity from Sarah Smith, amen, peace out, shoot your shot

jeepers creepers y'all

the uruguayan 100 track megamix is wild, highly recommended!

I totally missed that the closing track from Flaming Swords dropped last week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7HtsvkBcrM

That long instrumental coda is unreal. This is how you prog the fuck out!

Flaming Swords is out and it's...challenging, in the best way possible. Each song is so densely packed with circuitous chord changes that veer in and out of dissonance that a lot of it washed over me on first listen. But it makes more and more sense with each replay, new moments of beauty and brilliance revealing themselves each time. It's also gorgeously recorded and mixed, with some nice precisely deployed signal processing throughout (e.g. the flange/chorus in the second half of "Wrong Item", the echo on the snare in "I'm A Place"). I love all the pedal steel flourishes that give the whole thing a glowing cosmic twang.

Also it's just really impressive that the whole album was recorded live to tape in a single marathon session; they talk about it here: https://www.stereogum.com/2206474/band-to-watch-fievel-is-glauque/interviews/band-to-watch/

It's really great, yes - as one RYM comment put it, almost a Canterbury Scene album in feel, but done in ZP's inimitable wrong-jazz way

I’ve pointed this out before, but Phillips has also published poetry. Here’s his most recent: https://www.gauss-pdf.com/post/678701135391014912/gpdf298gpdfe055-zach-phillips-human-light

Waiting until Friday to get the new FIG but very excited about it.

i had to double-check that I hadn't written J. Sam's post above... i've listened 5 or 6 times now and it just gets better

it almost feels kind of funny to highlight on something that's so much about the chord motion and harmony, but the drumming (and how it's recorded) is so great throughout.

Loving the new album

This guy is the Frank Zappa of The Girl From Ipanema

Oh, hey, turns out I unreservedly love this one. I've tried various tracks before and they just never stuck - can't quite remember what turned me off but my fuzzy memory is telling me the jazz was a bit too smooth and the melodies not quite strong enough? Feel free to shout at me and tell me I was wrong about that, but this one is definitely hitting me.

Won’t shout, but “The River” (either the single or the version from Aérodynes) is absolutely one of the catchiest songs I’ve heard this year, truly incredible imo.

YES I love "The River" so much. The Blanche Blanche Blanche original is great too in its haunted "glo-fi" way, but it deserved to get the full HD Fievel treatment

This is superb, thank u ilm

Don't miss out on Aerodynes (the EP from earlier this year) too! Hard to say yet which I prefer

link? I can't seem to find that one anywhere

slapp happy and henry cow were the first things I thought of when hearing this stuff, and there it is in the first post. I really like these past couple albums, the band is very tight live, but there's something about the band's work that seems pretty disposable, idk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6ZpBzUoqXY

new one is sounding grrrrreat. really impressive how much is packed into each tune but it rarely seems overstuffed.

link? I can't seem to find that one anywhere

finally getting around to the new one and wow! every song has a moment of casual virtuosity in either performance or composition, often both

amazing album

yeah i've listened at least once a day since it came out. there's a couple of songs i like less, but with the 1-2-3 punch of the first three songs you're already on the hydroslide and it's hard not to listen to the whole thing.

Don't call it Canterbury!

(thread)

as a self-taught weirdo who's always felt like a wack instrumental worm & who's in embarrassed awe of nearly every jazzer's musicianship, when people criticize Fievel in the vein of "this virtuosic Jacob Collier Berklee bullshit leaves me cold" it hits like the hugest compliment

— Fievel Is Glauque // Zach Phillips (@fievelisglauque) December 13, 2022

I think genres are a useful shorthand for describing how something sounds, but I get why one might bristle at being slapped with a label that has nothing to do with one's own conception of their music.

At any rate, AOTY for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-s2KawCrzk

[VHS, phone & DV recordings from Aug/Sep 2021, Brussels BE at Kiosk Radio, VOLTA, & Brasserie de la Mule]
this video compilation mirrors (+ 1 extra song) the sequence of our first studio album "Flaming Swords," which was recorded in a single day the same week as these shows/rehearsals.

He just released a new album under the Martyr Group project (Zach on vocals/keys + 4 guitarists). Cassette pre-order and download: https://laloi.bandcamp.com/album/non-bloody-martyrdom.

I'm about halfway through and really digging it. It's noisier/spikier than the last Fievel and as harmonically/melodically/lyrically dense as ever. I haven't heard either of the two previous Martyr Group albums, so I have some catching up to do...

Notes from Bandcamp:

𝕬𝖑𝖇𝖚𝖒 𝕽𝖊𝖛𝖎𝖊𝖜, 𝖇𝖞 𝖎𝖙𝖘 𝕾𝖔𝖓𝖌𝖜𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖊𝖗
4/24/23, Brooklyn NY: I've just heard the new Martyr Group album. I'll tell the story so far: cemeterily crabbed by the curfewed Brussels of 2021 and psychosomatically/technologically thwarted from recording to my usual indiscernible specs, I still somehow managed to extract from the general shambles of my congenital brambles a season's batch of bad little birdies. These I entrusted to the direction of Quentin "Big French" Moore, who was charged with supervisorily forcing the cumulative transformation of my hasty Tascam 4-tracks and questionable charts into these here ersatz togethernesses of our geographically fractured Martyr Group. It was agreed I'd be disallowed from hearing the material again in anything but its eventual, mastered form.

Established 2014, Martyr Group's original premise was to make 100% live recordings of my dustiest songwriting with 4 guitarists -- Stephe, Quentin, Sam & Tommy -- rehearsed quickly (or not at all) using highly dubious charts, everyone playing direct-in to the Tascam 388, with zero percussive instrumentation and my vocal mic being the only air on the tape, mixed performatively in a deejay style. The sickly-sour air of fermenting mash meant for no potable purpose accordingly wafts from both our previous albums, but the stench off this third salmagundi is so ripe it partially lost us a member. Clocking the derangement of our enterprise, core affiliate Sam "Samuel Boat" Lisabeth immersed himself instead in the adult concerns of that external world these songs deny, though he did deign coquettishly appear, if only to tantalize the listener with his pointed scarcity. Sam's lovingly linear, da-Vincianly precise "coloring between the staves" usually offsets the rest of the group's gravitation toward what my ear tastes as "pickled major," so missing here is the garnish traditional to settle our stomach, and finally it is audibly alone the heroic hatch-battening of Stephe "Turbo World" Cooper (here in both mixing and performance capacities) that stems a would-be-fatal flood of superlydian vinegar.

Then there is Tom "Uncivilized" Csatari's fusional relationship with the guitar, for him more than the others appendage-like, the wagging finger of some deep-seated law. His appearance here is as consistently natural and unified as an old-growth wood bordering the crazy-tilt spires Quentin and Stephe built all over my house of cards, often in their hysterics eclipsing its foundation lines, these mostly to be glimpsed in ostensible highlight by the "unreliable narrator" drummers Nick Baker and Derek Baron. Tommy's peanut butter hedgeline and my original rhodes voicings are alike pierced again and again by the sharp frosting of Quentin's densest-yet agit-prop harmonic layer cakes, greedy greedy stacks that spurred even circumspect Stephe to go more than a bit toppings-mad. According to Stephe, Quentin provided stems almost equal in number to everyone else's trackings combined. No one said you couldn't come to this melee fully strapped, so my friend unrivaled in sideways swordsmanship rolled up like this was Blade 4, trenchcoat double-stuffed with goodies galore.

This dense thicket of words, by the way, derives not only from manic enthusiasm hopefully betraying tacit compliment for all concerned, but also my considerable psychological distance from the result of what originated as my writing, an odd enterprise from which I already find myself routinely removed. I do not, after all, remember writing any of these songs, but that in and of itself is hardly unusual -- what's new is my complete lack of involvement in their development and representation. So in the end, I hear this as a Quentin or Stephe solo album as much as one by Martyr Group. "Collaboration," a dirty word recalling the sins of Vichy, is wonderfully absent here, where it's "every man for himself" through cartoon mazes of button-mashed pentads. Instead of beautifying my little birdies with gratifying "contributions," Quentin and Stephe shunted them through serieses of sieves, dicing and reconstituting their spirits like high-priced deli snacks in a world none of us can afford, then exhibiting their munching. More than this perversion of impetus in the shape of a senselessly fine-wrought task I could not have dreamed. And as in half my favorite art, this excessive and directionally abstruse labor resembles that greatest of fools' errands, the martyr's quest for survival through death. The other half, of course, has never been the jurisdiction of Martyr Group.
-- Zach Phillips, 2023

Couple of new FiG tracks. w00t!

https://fievelisglauque.bandcamp.com/album/i-m-scanning-things-i-can-t-see-dark-dancing

^They don't miss. Also signed to Fat Possum and have finished tracking a new album.

https://www.thefader.com/2023/08/15/fievel-is-glauque-premiere-dark-dancing-im-scanning-things-i-cant-see-video

How did it take me until TODAY to hear Wink With Both Eyes, total colossal masterpiece obv

These folks were wonderful at Cafe Oto on Saturday. They covered the Clash and made it seem like a good idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cDbXSPoW_M

oh damn, missed it

Playing again tonight in Stokey if you can blag a ticket.

why does nobody fuckin tell me about these things until too late

wow i love that cover

yeah this is lovely

i would absolutely adore a whole album that sounded like that

cosign!

coincidentally enough, in other RIO-gone-easy-listening news, i bought and listened to the latest Cheer-Accident album today, which is their own tribute to Burt Bacharach, and it goes pretty hard: https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/vacate-2

C'est magnifique

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv7eP5yf7GA

oh this is choice

*gets to the bridge*

oh my!

as a self-taught weirdo who's always felt like a wack instrumental worm & who's in embarrassed awe of nearly every jazzer's musicianship, when people criticize Fievel in the vein of "this virtuosic Jacob Collier Berklee bullshit leaves me cold" it hits like the hugest compliment
— Fievel Is Glauque // Zach Phillips (@fievelisglauque)

A lot of what I love about this stuff is hearing all my favorite DIY qualities — that kind of ramshackle intimacy and freedom — applied to music that's not only not primitive but kinda gleefully anti-primitive, so ... this tweet definitely tracks! All the different reference points thrown up in this thread do a great job of tracing that rare quality across a bunch of different eras and genres, stuff where there's a love of musical complexity but it's deployed with the loose joy and happy weirdness of amateurism.

Hell yeah! More beautiful brain food. Album is out October 25:

https://fatpossum.com/products/rong-weicknes

Finding themselves in the novel position of having, for the first time, more than a single day to record an album and a label to record it for, Zach and Ma put together a band and brought them to live and record at The Outlier Inn, a farm and music studio in upstate New York, from July 27 to August 2, 2023. With time in the studio to experiment, Fievel Is Glauque finally had the resources to try an old idea Phillips had never brought to fruition: a recording approach he calls “live in triplicate.” First laying down a foundational take, then a duplicate take on top of it, and finally an improvisatory, antagonistic take, the octet exclusively played live together without using a click track, so that each layer of performance features tiny rhythmic variations and imperfections, both intentional and not.

Psyched for a whole record of "live in triplicate." Can definitely hear the fruits of this approach in the clavinet, flute, and guitar squiggles all over the new single.

My god, "As Above..." is amazing.

yep, absolutely brilliant, and the synthesis between amateurism and super-detailed ambition is absolutely one of my favourite musical dynamics

this feels like a big step forward, i love it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp6uMiFNv6M

the extended coda here is just wonderful

it's also one of those songs that's a bit disorienting on first listen but once the groove clicks it's fantastic

all the evidence so far points to this album being amazing

they're really going for it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82dpAHOGBSc

it's fascinating to compare to the original blanche blanche blanche version which is nice and all but the new version is on another level

i am going to be the naysayer and say that this stuff leaves me cold these days— i understand it fully, but a lot of it sounds very “samey” to me in a way. i find it totally unexciting. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe i will become a fan again in a few years, but for now i am passing on it.

what does it sound samey to?

honestly think it might be the vocal affect— the flatness of it feels like it cancels out any of the dynamic tension of the music. would love to hear a lot of these as instrumentals, in other words

album totally lives up to expectations, aoty perhaps?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyhf-NVP-T4

why is this edited like this lmao

Listening to this, it's fantastic, right up there in the ZP catalogue

i love how this feels so smooth & so spiky simultaneously, it's like a really tightly-wound version of steely dan

Yeah I love this, no surprise there. The live-in-triplicate thing adds an extra layer of depth to these already gorgeously complex songs. And the instrumental textures are perfect; the Clavinet and electric sitar do for this record what the Rhodes and pedal steel did for Flaming Swords.

Nice interview with ZP on the new record. He also confirms intent to release all their past unreleased work, which there seems to be a lot of.

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/fievel-is-glauque-wants-to-make-you-laugh-then-cry

a fine read ty!

Love this bit:

SHARPLES: Lyrically, do you guys feel like you get a lot of jokes in the music?

PHILLIPS: Hell yeah. If we didn’t, I wouldn’t like this, because the world has too much self-serious expression. Having levity be part of your orientation in making things leads to things that contain more. That’s what I’ve noticed, anyway. You need to play with language and let language play with you. And one way to gain access to that kind of state of mind is by willing yourself into a kind of psychedelia through humor. Everything is pretty strange, and we’re not even talking about all the problems that perplex us and make us miserable sometimes. It seems like there’s always this fork in the road all the time, where if you take the path that involves levity, humor is where you get the whole picture. Seriousness blocks humor, but humor doesn’t block seriousness.

Absolutely, and I completely agree with his philosophy on a fundamental level. Also loved the bit where he discussed their writing process

this album is so good. not sure yet if i prefer it to the manic hook-a-minute whirlwind that was flaming swords, but it is an incredible achievement

“transparent,” “kayfabe,” “it’s so easy,” “my oubliette,” “eternal irises”

“as above, so below”!

Whoa, so did I understand that correctly, they did full band overdubs on on top of the whole song, twice (ie 2 passes on top of each original take) for every song???

lovely record
reminded me of slapp happy at times

Bit of a Cate Le Bon/Drinks vibe too, who also has Slapp Happy references at time.

this is very likely aoty but also i'm increasingly realising they have near identical melodic sensibilities to the soundtracks of the first few sonic the hedgehog games. maybe they should make a new jack swing album?

lolll it has to happen

Holy shit, grant me a late pass on this one. Rong Weicknes is absolutely mindblowing. I sampled a couple of tracks off the previous one and didn't really get it, but this one is such a journey!

rong weicknes helped make flaming swords make more sense to me but it was still a huge step up for them yeah, letting the songs breathe made a huge difference and they really went for it with the arrangements

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TJBqf9ZUNQ

recording of a recent show here apparently featuring a bunch of new material

i vaguely remembered mention of a follow-up album already having been recorded and i can't find mention of that now but in this interview phillips mentions a rong weicknes outtakes ep is planned: https://beatsperminute.com/saving-oblivion-a-qa-with-fievel-is-glauque/