Fabio Orsi — Random Shades of Day
This isn’t three CDs of new material but instead you get one disc that compiles three previous releases and one unreleased track (Fade Again). A second disc that contains alternate versions, unreleased material and two previously released pieces and disc three is completely new material.
Releasing a triple CD when you’re not that established takes some balls and this is by no means 3 perfect CDds. It has its highs and its lows but overall it’s put together with some thought as to how the tracks will work together and also to offer a mix of light and shade.
The first CD brings together three releases from 2006 and 2007. The previously unreleased track looks like it belongs to the 2007 “Faded On the Blowing of Winter” sessions. The first 5 tracks (from the “I’m Happy Here” CDr) are a mixture of styles. There’s a couple of Zoviet- France sounding pieces to start with (using the trademark Z-f sample and hold technique with additional instrumentation on top). The third and fourth tracks using repeating guitar motifs as the underpinning sound and then add synths and samples on top giving the pieces a sort of quasi Tangerine Dream feel. Track 4 sounding like it’s almost an outtake from TDs Hyperborea. The last track of this section is again dominated by a guitar motif but is much mellower in the instruments it uses as its accompaniment. With gentle piano and lush synth pads pushing it in an ambient direction.
“South of Me” a 3” CDr from 2006 is a 19 minute piece making up track six of this first CD. There were only 100 copies of this in its original release on Foxglove. It’s quite astounding that such a beautiful piece of work can be released in such a limited quantity but that’s the price we pay these days for it being so easy for anyone with a computer and an internet connection to release their music with little or no quality control. This is my favourite piece of the whole of the three CDs. Nothing much actually happens during the 19 minutes it’s a piece that evolves very slowly. It starts off a little bit Hillbilly with what sounds almost like banjo picking and some Deep Southern States American voices babbling on. It then moves back into the familiar territory of a repeated picked guitar motif with every couple of minutes an extra layer of electronics being added very subtlety so you’d miss it if you blinked. It carries on like this until the last couple of minutes where you get a slightly more aggressive sound synth patch appearing until we get a return of the American voices from the beginning with some organ and some folk singing and there it ends. 19 brilliantly composed minutes.
“Faded on the Blowing of Winter” was another limited release (212 copies this time) and provides us with the next two tracks on this disc. The first piece is a fairly simple one. It’s ten minutes long and made up of some drumming on hand drums, some reedy sounding instruments and a synth making it all sound not unlike a distant relation of Nurse with Wounds “Swamp Rat” (minus the vocals). This carries on for the first half of the piece until what sounds to me like a harmonium takes over and carries on with a drone for the remainder of the piece. The second track of this release (both incidentally 10.02 in length) takes us back to the more familiar territory of synth drones and gentle guitar riffs. Lots of subtle use of a phasing effect going in this too.
The last track on this first CD is the unreleased “Fade Again,” which is a soundscape made up of synth sounds. It’s fairly understandable why it’s been unreleased up to now as it doesn’t really hold its own against the collected works that precede it on the disc.
The second CD is my least favourite of the trio. Looking again at the track listing what I don’t like about this second CD is the previously unreleased pieces. They mostly have piano in them which doesn’t work for Fabio’s pieces to me. I think the best pieces of those eras have already been released and putting these out is a bit like scraping the barrel. Going on his prolific work rate (he’s had two albums out already this year) he doesn’t need to be going back to his old unreleased pieces, it’s not like he’s struggling to be creative.
The five pieces that I do like on this second disc are from releases on a variety of labels and tread familiar paths to the tracks on the first disc but with a notable absence of the guitar. They rely much more heavily on the synths and samples. It’s almost veering towards Boards of Canada territory.
If this second disc could be edited down so the unreleased tracks were removed it would work far better.
The third CD is totally new material. Titled “Random Shades of Day,” it comprises of four tracks and runs for 44 minutes.
The first piece (none have titles) starts with a solo harmonium sound (or synth version of a harmonium) that lasts for the first few minutes and wouldn’t sound out of place on a Nico album. Other keyboard sounds appear as an accompaniment to it and stay with it until the end of the piece. I actually prefer the solo Harmonium sound and would have been happy for the track to stay like that rather than have the addition of the more artificial sounds that were brought in.
The second track starts off with slow swirling layers of keyboard textures that build up for five minutes until a rhythm kicks in making this almost head back towards Boards of Canada realms and leaving us with a fine piece of electronica. After “South of Me” this is possibly one of the most accomplished pieces on these discs.
The third track takes things down a gear. Starting with a couple of string like synth drones and a single slowly repeating beat it gradually mutates it’s sounds until it starts to sound almost choral in nature. It stays like this for the remainder of this 16 minute piece. There are slow subtle changes and whilst it’s incredibly repetitive it does work.
The very last track of this 3 Cd marathon is a very mellow piece with organ sounds and some guitar strings being plucked. With the guitar having an inventive use of a combination of phasing and panning used on it. It’s getting a little too much like the background music you’d hear in a New Age Shop for me and if it had been placed anywhere else on these discs rather than at the very end it wouldn’t work. But being the last track it’s actually a good way to wind the discs down.
Never having heard of Fabio Orsi before I’ve been impressed with these pieces and apart from the sub-standard (certainly compared to the rest of the tracks on here) previously unreleased tracks there’s plenty on here to recommend and I’m certainly going to start investigating the rest of his back catalogue.