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CD
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AVM 066CD
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The Room, Fenster's fourth album and their first release on Altin Village & Mine, marks the beginning of a new chapter for the band. After releasing three albums, a feature length film, and touring extensively throughout Europe and North America since 2012, The Room serves as an entry point into their sonic evolution. The essential characteristic of the band is transformation - within and between genres, albums, and songs. Their sound is a window framing psychedelic, groovy, hypnogogic, playful pop. Fenster is Elias Hock, Jonathan Jarzyna, Lucas Ufo, and JJ Weihl. Their mission in creating this album was to compose and arrange every song together in a room. It is an experiment in collective creativity that pushed all of them to transcend their individuality and create something together which is greater than the sum of its parts. The songs were tracked live in a house where the band ate, slept, and played together. They were intent on finding and locking into a human groove, one open to imperfection, while still maintaining tightness among them. They wanted to make the songs feel alive, as if the listener were present in the room with them. The album's title track "The Room" opens the record like a rollercoaster ride. There is a tension in the first bars that ties us to earth, a minimal riff that guides us to the first chorus where we feel we are slowly lifting into the air. By the time we reach the second chorus, it has exploded into a space far away from the planet's gravitational pull. The band's use of juxtaposition is not just a way of channeling a vast library of musical genres and concepts, but also a means of expression. Combining tender pop melodies with kraut-beats, disco grooves and psychedelia frees the band from any one sound and creates a genre all its own. This playfulness is especially vibrant in songs like "Rhythm A" and "Haha Lol", which deconstruct and fuse together disparate moments of explosive rock, tender harmonies, percussion made of splashing water, voices from a radio, and electric piano. Thus, the whole process of making a record is about capturing a moment in time. This is the record they made at this point in time, all together, in a room.
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LP
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AVM 066LP
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LP version. Includes download code. The Room, Fenster's fourth album and their first release on Altin Village & Mine, marks the beginning of a new chapter for the band. After releasing three albums, a feature length film, and touring extensively throughout Europe and North America since 2012, The Room serves as an entry point into their sonic evolution. The essential characteristic of the band is transformation - within and between genres, albums, and songs. Their sound is a window framing psychedelic, groovy, hypnogogic, playful pop. Fenster is Elias Hock, Jonathan Jarzyna, Lucas Ufo, and JJ Weihl. Their mission in creating this album was to compose and arrange every song together in a room. It is an experiment in collective creativity that pushed all of them to transcend their individuality and create something together which is greater than the sum of its parts. The songs were tracked live in a house where the band ate, slept, and played together. They were intent on finding and locking into a human groove, one open to imperfection, while still maintaining tightness among them. They wanted to make the songs feel alive, as if the listener were present in the room with them. The album's title track "The Room" opens the record like a rollercoaster ride. There is a tension in the first bars that ties us to earth, a minimal riff that guides us to the first chorus where we feel we are slowly lifting into the air. By the time we reach the second chorus, it has exploded into a space far away from the planet's gravitational pull. The band's use of juxtaposition is not just a way of channeling a vast library of musical genres and concepts, but also a means of expression. Combining tender pop melodies with kraut-beats, disco grooves and psychedelia frees the band from any one sound and creates a genre all its own. This playfulness is especially vibrant in songs like "Rhythm A" and "Haha Lol", which deconstruct and fuse together disparate moments of explosive rock, tender harmonies, percussion made of splashing water, voices from a radio, and electric piano. Thus, the whole process of making a record is about capturing a moment in time. This is the record they made at this point in time, all together, in a room.
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CD
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MORR 139CD
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Fenster's Emocean is the soundtrack to a sci-fi adventure film created by and starring the band. The music is a swirling cosmos of richly varied post-psychedelia, transcending the boundaries of reality and traditional pop records to join the ranks of other genre-bending music films like Daft Punk's Interstella 5555 (2003) or Prince Rama's Never Forever (2013). With Emocean, the band utilizes its classic approach to non-traditional percussion and instrumentation, but this time ventures deeper into new territory with funky basslines ("Off the Cahin") complemented by additional instruments like bass clarinet ("Memories"), flute ("Phantasia"), and modular synthesizers ("Samson's Theme"). Emocean is a nuanced and surprising departure from the band's first two albums, Bones (MORR 112CD/LP, 2011) and The Pink Caves (MORR 127CD/LP, 2013). The approach to this record was a more holistic exercise in collective songwriting resulting from a series of feverish jam sessions. The sounds evoke a broad spectrum of parallel universes, from soothing surfy tidal cliffs to analog synth dungeons; from interstellar purple-funk disco-techs and wobbly organs in houses of worship to acid blues parades and delicate maidens picking daisies on the moon ("Les Fleurs"). The most danceable track is definitely "Off the Cahin," and "Memories" is a sun-soaked summer jam. Emocean was conceived as a conceptual soundtrack before the film's actual production and evolved into the most ambitious project the band has ever done. With a year of planning, over a month of shooting on HD and mostly VHS, a cast of over 100 actors and extras, numerous outdoor and indoor locations, the rental of an entire island for a day, drone cameras, and a self-built green-screen studio, the project is unlike anything else. It brought the band to the edge of madness. Based in Berlin and hailing from four different countries, Fenster began as a 2010 collaboration between Jonathan Jarzyna (Germany/Poland) and JJ Weihl (US), who were later joined by Lucas UFO (France) and Will Samson (UK). Fenster's first two albums garnered critical acclaim, and the band has toured extensively in the USA, UK, and 15 other countries in Europe. This release comes in advance of a planned tour featuring the band playing the soundtrack live along with screenings of the film, transforming the experience of classic silent cinema into a fantastical journey headed for the unknown.
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MORR 139LP
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LP version. Includes download code.
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CD
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MORR 127CD
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Fenster's second record, The Pink Caves, is a dark fairy tale brimming with layers of tremolo guitars, tactile percussion, soft analog synths and moon-dusted vocal melodies. The tracks take you on a slow-motion free-fall through the rabbit hole into an ethereal world of spectral soundscapes, lush pop opulence and minimalism, drawing inspiration from science fiction, French '70s film scores, and Lynchian mysticism. Work began on The Pink Caves in early 2013. A home studio was set up in a cabin in East Germany and the whole house was wired so every room contained different elements, set up in such a way that they were able to record live altogether. As a result, The Pink Caves radiates with an intuitive and spontaneous approach to noise experimentation. The band reputedly used the house they recorded in as an instrument in itself, using slamming doors, the clanging metal oven, the ticking of clocks, the animals in the yard, the water in the well, candlesticks, coat hangers and matches... whatever happened to be within reach. All of this was captured by producer Tadklimp, whose idiosyncratic and inimitable production skills unravel the complexities and textures of the album. The new album plumbs the depths with broken and cracked bits. Weihl's vocals roseate through the gusty opening track "Better Days" and into Fenster's trademark ghostly guitar on "Sunday Owls." The third track "In the Walls" sends you on a slow elevator ride to outer space with Letournelle's pulsing analog synthesizers leading the way. The album waltzes, meanders, lilts and laments towards an introspective and haunting middle, reaching its peak with "The Light," which channels the voice of a hypnotic cult leader. The most energetic burst comes right before the end with "Hit & Run" and "1982," culminating in the cloud-soaked lullaby, "Creatures." With its subtle and surreal lyrics, The Pink Caves often feels like it is conversing with an imaginary spectre, at times longing for the purity of nature, and occasionally lamenting the futility of it all. Themes of dystopian love, attachment, estrangement and alienation permeate, describing invisible things to a backdrop of a subterranean dreamworld where bad dreams are ultimately rendered good in the grand scheme of things. With "Fireflies," Jarzyna channels a 17th-century balladeer in ensconcing the listener in the dark recesses of the childhood forest, while the morbidity of "True Love" is at once life-affirming yet echoes Camus' plea to abandon all hope in order to be truly free. With this record, Fenster ventures into new spaces, exploring different techniques, instrumentation and song structures. The album's title and aesthetic derives from the concept of a make-believe heaven -- a place you go when you die that only exists in your mind.
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LP
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MORR 127LP
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LP version. Comes in a gatefold sleeve.
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CD
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MORR 112CD
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Fenster is the duo of New Yorker-turned-Berliner JJ Weihl and Berlin-born Jonathan Jarzyna, that plays de-constructed pop music, layering subtle distortions, melodic chords and city soundscapes under dream narratives. Their sound and recording style has analog warmth, exploring the relationship between machine errors in their circuit-bent beats and the tactile use of objects and instrumentation. Their influences range from The Velvet Underground to the sounds of broken records, the hum of a washing machine, or the faint melodies of oldies tunes through their kitchen radio, at times, reminding you of an American version of The XX. The band's name springs from an ominous incident during the recording of their first album: a window shattered on JJ's head, bestowing her with a bump and the name "Fenster." The album starts off establishing most of its musical themes in the first half of the tracks, introducing characteristic elements such as stripped-down percussion, reverby vocals, slamming doors and dynamic song structures. Starting off with the classic lo-fi pop ballad "Oh Canyon," the album dives into moodier tracks like "The Hunter" or "Gravediggers," pairing synthesizers with banjo, and integrating shovels and batteries as percussive instruments. The second half of the album begins with the suicidal sea ballad, "Fisherman," a song based around a randomly generated rhythm, incorporating electric guitar, glockenspiel and zither that culminates in a four-part harmony underscored by drums recorded in a freight elevator building up to the final moment in which the guitar sonically drowns. On "Killer Surf Walker," a pastiche of '50s surf rock, a slide guitar is paired with an old out-of-tune piano, and a recording of a beach in Brooklyn at sunset. Lyrically, the album touches on everything from Schadenfreude to nostalgia about the beginning of one's adult life and the illusion of invincibility and permanence to vivid imagery of death, murder, and fallen kingdoms in "Blue To White," "Killer Surf Walker," and finally "Gespenster," which ends with an explosive 8 part harmony. Fenster's charm and inimitability comes in the form of collage; hungry to integrate their vision of the future with the sound of the past. Futuristic nostalgia with a lyrical bent towards the macabre world of dreams.
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LP
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MORR 112LP
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Gatefold LP version. Fenster is the duo of New Yorker-turned-Berliner JJ Weihl and Berlin-born Jonathan Jarzyna, that plays de-constructed pop music, layering subtle distortions, melodic chords and city soundscapes under dream narratives. Their sound and recording style has analog warmth, exploring the relationship between machine errors in their circuit-bent beats and the tactile use of objects and instrumentation. Their influences range from The Velvet Underground to the sounds of broken records, the hum of a washing machine, or the faint melodies of oldies tunes through their kitchen radio, at times, reminding you of an American version of The XX. The band's name springs from an ominous incident during the recording of their first album: a window shattered on JJ's head, bestowing her with a bump and the name "Fenster." The album starts off establishing most of its musical themes in the first half of the tracks, introducing characteristic elements such as stripped-down percussion, reverby vocals, slamming doors and dynamic song structures. Starting off with the classic lo-fi pop ballad "Oh Canyon," the album dives into moodier tracks like "The Hunter" or "Gravediggers," pairing synthesizers with banjo, and integrating shovels and batteries as percussive instruments. The second half of the album begins with the suicidal sea ballad, "Fisherman," a song based around a randomly generated rhythm, incorporating electric guitar, glockenspiel and zither that culminates in a four-part harmony underscored by drums recorded in a freight elevator building up to the final moment in which the guitar sonically drowns. On "Killer Surf Walker," a pastiche of '50s surf rock, a slide guitar is paired with an old out-of-tune piano, and a recording of a beach in Brooklyn at sunset. Lyrically, the album touches on everything from Schadenfreude to nostalgia about the beginning of one's adult life and the illusion of invincibility and permanence to vivid imagery of death, murder, and fallen kingdoms in "Blue To White," "Killer Surf Walker," and finally "Gespenster," which ends with an explosive 8 part harmony. Fenster's charm and inimitability comes in the form of collage; hungry to integrate their vision of the future with the sound of the past. Futuristic nostalgia with a lyrical bent towards the macabre world of dreams.
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7"
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ANOST 032EP
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Fenster plays deconstructed pop music, layering subtle distortions, melodic chords and city soundscapes under dream narratives and schadenfreude. The two songs evoke a futuristic nostalgia -- playing with Tom Waits percussion and Velvet Underground guitar riffs with a nod to the macabre Dada sweetness of early Beck and Cat Power. Their instruments include slamming doors and trashy synths, utilizing the analog warmth of their instrumentation to underscore the interaction between the two vocalists.
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