Franz Fjödor — _Exhibition

Young Dutch musician Wouter Jaspers calls himself the more or less the 'hardest working man' of the experimental music business as he performs a lot (160 shows last year) and often with the intention to engage with the audience as much as possible.

He sung in a metal band and worked with noise groups like The Jim Morrisons and Cock Cobra, among many other ongoing projects like 4daladies, Gays With Machines and Meldy Peaches. Recordings are released on many imprints including one run by the collective of which he's part: Vatican Analog. On top of that he wrote a new book to be released in autumn this year and inbetween things he finds time to travel (I suppose combined with performances of course).

On _Exhibition he works under the pseudonym Franz Fjödor to deliver mellow organic drones mixed with a dark folky approach. Often, besides more toneless ambience there are hints of chords and mood. Sometimes this harmony gets more prominent, like the melancholic cello's that make up a large part of _Dzido. Field recordings are used like in opener _Terezin. The knowledge that the unrecognizable sounds are from the WW2 concentration camp in Therezienstadt makes the atmosphere darker but more by the specific knowledge than by sound alone. The same goes for _Geigercounting, where an ad hoc interview with a dauntless Ukranian busdriver who reasons he's only shortly exposed to the radiation of Chernobyl. That it happens daily seems a minor detail. I must say that spoken word samples sometimes tend to break the spell of atmospheric music like this a bit. But it's a minor peeve, the album's closing track _Boryspol. The guitars still fit in well with the organic drones presented before but the fragile vocals caught me off guard. This is easily solved with a second spin so no harm done.

The bio mentions Burzum as an influence but I can't find that, the closest to my ears is some of Nurse With Wound's drone work. It's stated that _Exhibition isn't a concept nor a protest album but it raises 'awareness', personally I've come to wonder what this 'awareness' really is and how it can serve us, but regardless this is first and foremost a dark but not suffocatingly bleak collection of ambient drones. Actually, a rather pleasant listen. Something that might change when the likes of John Wiese and Sudden Infant laid their hands on this material on the remix album that will be released later this year.