Vital Weekly
review @ VITAL WEEKLY
thanks to Frans de Waard !
Who is behind XFnX? I don't know! I am not sure if it is supposed to be a mystery, but there is no name. The was a tour in 2018, titled 'Loosing Shelter', and in 2019 the 'Alchemical Mystery Tour'. Recordings from those tours found their way into 'Ex Nihilio' music. That title seems to imply that the music comes 'out of nothing', but that is not true then, isn't it? A "pedal tweaked analogue drum machine", and a "bass guitar tweaked analogue synth"; that is the set-up here. Sometimes I believe Vital Weekly will be more and more a place for improvisation and modern composition, which I would very much regret if that happens, but a release such as things makes me think differently. It is not that I am a massive fan of this kind of music, but the bluntness of the music here is quite refreshing. The beats are harsh and loud, the bass is muddy and dark, hoovering closely over the earth's surface, while the beats are like torrential rain. Or like a whip cracking. Industrial music, department harsh sounds. XFnX's music sounds like a direction that Esplendor Geometrico didn't take, especially the addition of bass guitar seems like an interesting addition. The music is very minimal, relentless, and best enjoyed at full volume throughout. Sometimes the music goes off the rails completely, and a rather straightforward noise remains, but somehow NFnX reloads his guns while going full speed ahead and starts firing properly again. Techno meets industrial meets postpunk.
Bad Alchemy
review @ BAD ALCHEMY
XFnX, the psychedelic-noise project of Chris Teissier, mingled with 'Friction', 'Ignition' and 'Fusion' among the Monsters Of Doomcore in Rotterdam, on the platform of the Nietzschean-nihilistic powernoise formation The Peoples Republic Of Europe. Ex nihilo (ACU 1035) features him improvisationally rehashing material performed at his 'Losing Shelter' & 'Alchemical Mystery' performances with pedal tweaked analog drum machine & bass guitar tweaked analog synth. My attempt to get a picture of the Frenchman gains thereby, apart from his weakness for the sex appeal of Catastrophe Noise and Cacophoneuses, through his interest in for instance Stahlschlag in Hamburg, the synthwave of Dame Area in Barcelona and the Welsh producer Dez Williams on the one hand and on the other hand the ambient drone composer Arthur C. Colombo, Attila Szabó aka Remetemen and even the guitar wizard Guillaume Gargaud, although only very vague contours, but still cosmopolitan and blinker-free. With "the dark side of mathematics" (2014) he admittedly gave my weak-math trauma an inner march past. And how he let "live @ club re:noize" (2017) the 'rolling mill' desolate 'mass production' stomp their 'modern dance' gives a foretaste of his protectionless & homeless alchemy. Rolling swirling and stereophonically slagged automaton beat is ostinatly pushed and rutted by dark impulses. The relentlessly rough bass thrust plays a leading role, hand-scraping hatchings in hypnotizing repetition stage a ritually rocking brainstorming. You can almost see the rows in trance and flush, turning away from Mammon at least for this one hour and stomping in homage to a goat god. For me, the rough buzzing bass reminds me more of Gimbri mysticism in Joujouka (or Konono Nº1 power from Kinshasa) than of Velvet Underground, but at the same time rocked with machine-divine rhythm and racy, buzzing insistence. In riffing and knocking ever turning loops, which in spite of all monotony yet keep on screwing to petroleum tamtam and freshly oiled keep on smacking, growling, yelping, crackling, chirping. Who can follow the merciless beat dictate without drugs? Because even the goat god, even if he eats hearts crisp and bloody, is a stubborn mathematician.
Nieuwe Noten
review @ NIEUWE NOTEN
thanks to Ben Taffijn!
Within the world of (experimental) electronics many musicians work under one or more aliases. However, with some searching you can usually find out who is behind it pretty quickly. This is also the case with XFnX. His Facebook page leads us to the French musician Chris Teissier. There we also learn that the man is also a guitarist, bassist and composer and that in the past he was a member of Fahrenheit 451/Esthetic Suicide. But now as XFnX, with the latest achievement being the album released by Attenuation Circuit, 'ex nihilo'.
And it comes to us in four pieces, 'Alchemical' in three parts and 'Losing Shelter (abridged)'. All are improvisations: 'one shot takes, no overdubs, all impros'. 'Losing Shelter (abridged) then probably initially recorded during the 'Loosing Shelter Tour' (sic) and 'Alchemical' during the 'Alchemical Mystery Tour'. Which means that the music dates from 2018 and 2019 respectively.
'Alchemical' makes it clear that we should look for XFnX in the more rhythmic corner of experimental electronica. It borrows against dance and techno, but takes it a step further in terms of creativity. Whereas the commercial version of this kind of music often suffers from far-reaching forms of dullness - it is, after all, utility music - Teissier manages to avoid that here. And that while it is still possible to dance to it, at least part of the time. The fact that the man is able to entertain us so much is largely due to the particularly unpolished, machine-like sounds with which he builds up his rhythms. 'Beauty' is a term that thankfully does not appear in XFnX's dictionary. And in the three parts he steadily builds up the tension. In the first part it's still fairly calm, in the second he advances with heavier artillery and his sound world takes on overwhelming forms. Towards the end it seems as if an alarm has gone off. The third section initially sounds a bit more polished, danceable, but not much of that remains further on. Here again, XFnX proves itself a specialist in unusual sounds.
Losing Shelter (abriged)' is not essentially different. Here too, XFnX quickly builds up a solid rhythmic structure, only this time more transverse than in 'Alchemical'. Dancing seems to me, although I am anything but a connoisseur, quite difficult here. Teissier's background as a guitarist can be heard here as well, so sometimes this piece tends more towards rock than to dance. Strong, beautifully unpolished sounds the man produces here, machine violence, purposeful sledgehammer blows. In just over eleven minutes we are expertly beaten to a pulp. Thanks to Attenuation Circuit for releasing this very unusual album.
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