Feu Follet — Fogbank

The second full length by German drone artist Feu Follet, is about as icy as his debut, The Icycle Lectures, Vol. 1.

Yet, you can't see this as volume 2, as Mina Virtanen's piano which carried that first album is missing here. On Fogbank the source soundmaterial is provided by Jan-M. Iversen and Sindre Bjerga, whom I'm not familiar with. Their input seems less outspoken than the delicate pianoplaying by Mina, although it's perhaps more a case of less contrast between the sounds of Tobias Fischer and that of Iversen and Bjerga. The title of the cdr is as descriptive as the first album though, as the drones indeed sound like a fogbank surrounding, engulfing you. Slowly but surely, not hostile but a mysteriously pleasant spookiness. The first piece may be called Norwegian Cowboy (the second is its titletrack), the mood is consistent over the course of its length of about fourty minutes, save a short and not too obnoxious outburst of a more noisy nature after about twenty minutes of the title track.

As pleasant as these drones are I think that the first album, courtesy of Virtanen, showed a bit more character. Here the sounds are effective but also in danger of becoming a bit generic.