Fassine - Dialectik

by Adrian Janes

published: 30 / 5 / 2016

Label: Default Collective Records
Format: CD

Excellent debut album from London electronic band Fassine which proves to be a deserving object of fascination

Review

Self-described as “a journey from logic to absurdity and back again”, Fassine’s debut album embodies the dialectical effort to synthesise opposing ideas, through a musical palette which mixes tones of dark and light, cold and - if not ever really warm - are sometimes bright in the way that Spring sunshine can be, even as the chilly air against your skin contradicts expectations. The single ‘Sunshine’ embodies this feeling, as it moves from shadowed verses, sung quietly over a growling synth, to the glimmering flourish of the chorus. But even there a forbidding undercurrent runs: “We’ve got sunset in our minds/We’ve got sunshine in our eyes”. Sarah Palmer’s breathy singing is on the delicate end of the spectrum, somewhere between Beth Gibbons and Liz Fraser at her most intimate (‘We Had a Gun’, for instance, evokes Fraser’s work with Massive Attack). Tracks like ‘Whatever it Takes (To Help You Sleep)’, where her double-tracked voice is embedded in a blanket of string synth, could be classed as dream pop, yet the very title and yearning sound of those strings suggest the disturbed nature of this dream. It’s chilled in every sense. Elsewhere, on ‘Bring the Weight Down’, her voice is sombre as if with the burden of reflection, as synths and sound effects shift and snag the ear over crunching electronic percussion. This mastery of sonic textures typifies the album: ’Headlong’, with its towering synth and choral sample, has something of Propaganda’s grandeur, while the splashes of piano elsewhere become a romantic rivulet on ‘Kelby’, running alongside a light industrial rhythm. ‘Dialectik’ (sic) itself has a distorted, half-buried vocal, like the reception from a faulty radio, the lyrics suggesting the attempt to reconcile emotions of attraction and repulsion: “Your breath on me when you’re buried inside/You love me to loathe/ Shield my eyes/Breath on me and I’m burning inside”. The music reflects the protagonist’s confusion, high strings over bassy snarl and some especially adept programming which makes the drum and cymbal interplay almost human in its artful inventiveness. Fassine are sparing of words, and never more so than on the concluding ‘I Am Gone’, whose only other line is the resigned “It’s out of my hands”. Perhaps inevitably with Bpwie’s death so recent, traces of his influence seem everywhere even if unintended, but although the atmosphere of this essentially instrumental piece calls up ‘Subterraneans’ from the caverns of memory, the comparison does not disgrace. It’s tempting to compare Fassine with Eyes of a Blue Dog, creators of one of 2015’s best albums and a similarly-constituted trio of female singer and electronic backing. But the most important shared characteristic is that Fassine look to have made one of the albums of 2016.

Track Listing:-

1 Headlong
2 Bring the Weight Down
3 We Had a Gun
4 Whatever It Takes (To Help You Sleep)
5 Sunshine
6 Englander
7 Black Sheep
8 Kelby
9 Dialectik
10 I Am Gone