Fossil Aerosol Mining Project — Revisionist History

Fossil Aerosol Mining Project are an obscure veteran group of industrial cut up collage artists who have eluded my notice until now.  While their oldest releases date back to 1986, most of their activity has taken place since 2005, with a very prolific release schedule of multiple albums per year.  Their latest work "Revisionist History" presents a loop driven style quite similar to vintage Zoviet France or Rapoon, as well as other records of the classic industrial era from Hafler Trio ("Bang! An Open Letter") and Nurse WIth Wound ("Spiral Insana").

Here you will find a thick shroud of tape hiss and the delay, voices garbled as the tape moves back and forth across the play head in erratic motions, a sense of tension, apocalyptic foreknowledge, reverence and vulnerability. 

There is musicality and organization despite the overall minimalism, and the pure abstraction of employing vaguely tuned pockets of rushing air, crackling surface noise and rhythmic delay patterns as the primary elements of the music.  There is a warm, resonant tonality to the cloudlike circular repetitions, a tunefulness that allows the music to be beautiful and indicate some form of monastic focus and personal spirituality.

A fragment of a note, when looped, becomes a drone, and not just that, but a space.  The music is light, and seems to rise continuously like a balloon.  Many sounds are voice-like, smoothly luminous tones, perhaps fashioned from singing.  Unidentified whispered consonants flutter behind.  The sounds are cleverly and expressively made, sounding analog in texture, living and breathing, quite performative.  Rather than 'rough' around the edges, they are like torn wet paper.  Sometimes, crude recording equipment is evident, such as in the case of the spoken vocals.

It is a shy, introverted album in that the many spoken word passages are drowned in delay and rendered indiscernable.  As such, the album has a great deal of textual content which its listeners will never be able to access.   It therefore lacks the purpose and charisma of a group like Coil, as a result, but I can certainly enjoy its slowly strobing reverberant murmur, its gently soporific effect.  "Napthol Impermanence", in particular, is warm and soothing.  A string drone, sounding sourced from vinyl and then muted and slowed, recalls Biosphere or Gas.

This is a relaxing and rewarding listen.  Like Rapoon, the tone here is evocative of the world's mysteries and primitive past without being threatening.  It is a very relaxing listen, a skillfully balanced and thematic trip from beginning to end.  It captures both the esoteric mysteriousness of 80's tape music and the warmth, artfulness and detail of today's art ambient.  It is paced perfectly, with no excess.