The best ones are the ones you get told to listen to cos someone thinks you’ll love it and, of course, you forget to or mean to but don’t get around to it and keep mean to get around to it but the cat needs to be fed or something else and it all ends on some unexpected sunny afternoon when you’ve just come in from wandering aimlessly through the park with, well, a certain someone, and instead of taking that cheeky nap on the couch with a cup of tea to make it all go away, you press play on the link you’ve been given and Fenster happens…and suddenly your slightly saddened summer afternoon is made a little easier by the wonderful sound of their album Bones (hurry, click here to listen).
Eight songs later and White to Red and The Hunter still ringing in my ears and Golden Boy still trailing its way to its langurous end, Gespenster haunts you all the way to the end of this impressive record but no before a choir blasts you back to life out of nowhere a minute before the end…just in case you’d become too comfortable on the couch. Fenster have arrived..with intent.
There’s not much I can dig up about this Berlin/New York band. Except that they’re here right now and play Schokoladen tomorrow, ZMF next week and Madame Claude on June 5th. And the album is to be released on June 1st.
I don’t even know which one sings but he sounds like Mark Kozelek, Erlend Oye and Stuart Murdoch rolled into one. Is that too much? Whatever, see ye there.
Great album art too.
Main act on the night at this latest i Love M:Soundtrack is Olympic Symphonium from Canada featuring Mike from Snailhouse who impressed a week ago at NBI at Canadian Blast.
Here’s what their bandcamp says:
FENSTER (Bln via NYC) // Formed in 2010 by JJ, a New Yorker, Jonathan, a Berliner, and later completed by percussionist Lukas.
FENSTER makes de-constructed pop music, exploring electro acoustic arrangements peppered with traffic noises and bird calls. Their lyrics are often carefully constructed dream narratives, finding inspiration in the world of ghosts, graveyards. trains, religious imagery, and broken machinery. In their music, they build songs around errors, blending melodic chords with broken beats or minimal percussion. Their instruments range from banjo to synth to inanimate objects, using slamming doors and city soundscapes.
They recorded their first album Bones with their friend and producer Tad Klimp before ever having played live together. The recordings took exactly eight days and were a magical time, where they almost completely lived at their basement studio in Steglitz in the dead of winter. A window fell on JJ’s head and shattered.
