propellermagazine:
fatagaga – Laudanum Vol 1 (Soleilmoon)
Gentle reader, you may recall my lauding Mute Records with the phrase once „If it’s on Mute, buy it!“ Yes, I too have my pet causes. I can steadfastly state that I will only ever use this on two other record labels, Sub Rosa and Soleilmoon/Staalplaat. And look, it’s a Soleilmoon CD …
The name „fatagaga“ comes from the collages of our old friends Max Ernst and Hans Arp. So far, so good. Laudanum is a term used for a tincture of opium that was all the range among the effete artists of the victorian age. We all know what opium does. Laudanum is somnambulent music, all gurgling synths and tectonic arrangements. The press release draws comparisons to Brian Eno’s Apollo and Jon Hassel’s Fourth World: Possible Musics, which is not so far off. I also pick up traces of the more stately, older FAX records, Terre Thaemlitz’s ultra-minimal outlings, and, in particular, an oldie from Instinct Ambient, The SETI Project.
Very detached in mood and time, an album like this sounds (trying to avoid cheeseball ramifictions) alien. I want to take this album to the top of a hill far from all civilization and feel the wind against my skin. Hell, I want to have albums like these as the only artifacts of our civilization in my personal collective unconscious. (MS 01/02)
http://www.propellermagazine.com, 2001
(this online-magazine does’nt exist anymore)