ALAN COURTIS & JULIEN OTTAVI

Here at last is another entry in FMOA’s ‘Cozy Mysteries’ series: collaborations between artist duos focusing on acousmatic processes, and sound freed from “conceptual” moorings and imposed meanings.

Alan Courtis, who appeared as part of our label’s “Audio Postcards” series, returns here for a set recorded in Nantes with Julien Ottavi. Both are storied veterans of music based in experimentation, “extended” technique and the creative re-use of previously un-creative objects and sounds. Both are also notable for their uncommon flexibility as collaborators; with their respective curricula vitae including partnerships that resulted in everything from strange micro-sound / infrasound to explosive noise. So it wasn’t unlikely that these two gentlemen would end up on a collision course resulting in this album (and also a set of associated live gigs to follow it).

Over the course of nearly an hour, Ottavi and Courtis stretch out and deliver an intense set of thick enveloping drones, metallic clangor, liminal mischief and unidentifiable disturbances. Like much of what we hope to feature on the FMOA label, this material’s dislocated quality is a strength rather than a weakness. And it should also be mentioned, that its evasion of sonic conventions is achieved with a high degree of discipline - always nice to hear that total freedom doesn’t equal disaffected and lazy meandering!

There’s an affecting intimacy to these tracks, as well, which is not lost by juggling different instruments and varying shades of tonal color. All told, it epitomizes what we mean by the ‘Cozy Mysteries’ series title: immersion in the unknown and unpredictable is essential to the development of highly personal creative visions.

The ‘physical’ version of this album is a specially packaged compact disc, with full-color artwork concealed by a ‘false’ slipcover, and concealed yet again by a matte-black sealable mailer stickered with album information. This edition is limited to 200 copies. 

(label info)