Fighting Windmills
“Fraknoise contribution is, genius, unique, emotional….. a fairytale, a musical story about contemporary reality. The visual is a real piece of art.”
First release on EAR and EAR’s twenty-ninth release.
Release date:
November 12 2024 (EAR-24-029)
Artist:
FRAKnoise
Play-time:
0:51:24
Mastering:
FRAKnoise
Genre:
Electronic music/Instrumental
Cover-art/Photo:
EAR/FRAknoise
The visual (takes you on a magical journey)
Interview with Allard Krijger about his third album “(Mermaids) Fighting Windmills” by Elysia Sabornata for the online magazine: Music Influenced by Ned Erland.
ES: This album is called Fighting Windmills, and somewhere you wrote it is about how Mermaids are suffering from off shore windmills. Is this a follow up on your previous mermaid story ‘Mermaid in tomato saus’?
AK: Not directly, no. Mermaids in tomato saus is a picturebook, and also the subject is different, though I also use mermaids to tell the story. This new album has more connection I suppose with another picture book project “Modern Nymphs, and how they die.”, because both the stories deal with the fact that almost all choices we make in modern times destroy essential beauty. The nymphs, or in this case the mermaids, are the symbol of that fragile beauty being destroyed.
ES: So this is your third album, is there a connection with the other two?
AK: They are all three concept albums. The first “the Fables of Allard krijger from 2001 is an album with songs where characters like a fly, an oyster or a blackbird tell about their point of view, and most of them die at the end of the song. The second album, InterbabylonianMusicals (2010) was much more abstract, and dived into the the relation of musicality and meaning within language. This third album is also more abstract, there are no lyrics, but it tells the story about how mermaids suffer from off shore windmills with soundscapes en little musical motives.
ES: As a listener you are pushed from one emotion into the other, some transistions are just brutal. Why?
AK: Well, those things happen. If I do need to give a reason, I suppose you can interpret it like the emotional state of the mermaids having to deal with these windmills.
ES: How did you make this album? Is it a live recording and then edited afterwards?
AK: Not exactly. Though I did not use midi sequencing in any way, I first came up with what it should do and then I recorded it. Some other parts are indeed one takes. Only for the distorted drumpart I used programmed patterns of my circuit bended TR 707, for the rest everything is being played as is.
ES: And which instruments did you use?
AK: Oh, a whole bunch of them! A main role is for the theremin, of course to mimic the mermaids singing. Another big role is for the Expressive E Osmose, an modern MPE synthesizer. The leading horn melody comes from that thing. Further more I used the Yamaha CP30 analogue piano, a Fender Rhodes, a variety of Casio synths and homekeyboards, a few guitars and a Tama Techstar. The latter not as a drum module, it is circuit bended so I use it as a drone synth going through a bunch of effects. I also used taperecorders which played back recorded material at half speed.
ES: When is your next album going to be released? Or will that take another ten years?
AK: It’s going to be pretty soon actually, may 2025, also on EAR.
ES: And what kind of album will that be?
Ak: I have no clue whatsoever.