The Swedish label Fasaan Recordings reinvents itself once again with a 4-track EP from the Free Arts Band. Still rummaging around in the general field of dance music, but now with a touch more avant-garde on their palette.
The faceless entity that is the Free Arts Band introduces us to the simple idea of bringing a drum machine to art school. Infused with the creative space of the white-painted studio, a healthy dose of post-modernist pondering and the depth of traditional lineage, these four jams seem oddly timeless. Each of them riding on the verge of reductionism, they seem to ask: how funky can this get with as limited means as possible?
Opening track "Cool Grey" offers synthesized new age jazz with some sundazed guitars, while "KADK" strips everything down to their primal elements and lets the rhythms do the talking, pierced occasionally by a woozy keyboard figure that perfectly mimics the gestures of someone walking in on the wrong party. With lo-fi gloom, the heavyweight of the E.P. that is "Inhouse" rolls along on a beat that gently approaches the aesthetics of a West Coast low rider cruising track.
Closing the cycle is a sequel to its opening track, and walks you out into a Japanese garden of British new wave guitar twang and brightly colored Badarou-style synths.
Tracklist:
1. Free Arts Band - Cool Grey 05:53
2. Free Arts Band - KADK 07:45
3. Free Arts Band - Inhouse 08:29
4. Free Arts Band - Cool Grey II 05:52
Format: 12-inch Vinyl
Label: Fasaan Recordings
Catalog: FA010
Released: 2016
Genre: Leftfield / Electronic / Artfunk Tropicalé
