CD Feature/ Feu Follet: "Toi et le son"
TobiasTobias Fischer is a man of many activities. Most of them happen in the field of journalism, this website ‘Tokafi – Discover your Music’ being one example. Also, he runs the Tokafi print edition, which recently appeared in it’s second edition. But there are many more activities, spanning from movies to writing. No surprise therefore, that he also laid his hands on experimental music. This, the first product published on his own ‘Einzeleinheit’ label under the moniker of ‘Feu Follet’, which is maybe best translated as ‘Fen Fire’, and was done a year ago.
When you insert this CD into your player you should be in a relaxed mood. Or, if you are not, you have to count on being in a relaxed mood after having listened to the music. “Toi et le son” features two pieces which are similar only in their objective: These are mantra-like sounds, unidentifiable as to any instruments which you may be able to recognize. When listening the first impression I had was that of a sound world, which I’d like to call ‘industrial’. Not in the sense of machine sounds pounding away, no, not at all. Just the fact that nothing here can possibly be compared to anything you have ever heard before made me use this word. I may be wrong, I may even change my mind later, but for now I’ll call it Industrial Music.
Both pieces on the CD, the first called ‘Toi et le son’, which means ‘You and the sound’, consists of a drone. Sometimes swelling in intensity, then again declining and ever changing in a minimalistic way, it left me with the impression of a picture, which changes slightly in its nuances all the time, depending on the change of light, athmosphere, temperature, winds and noise, yet always portraying the same object. In the true meaning of the word, this is your sound, the one who lets you associate your own feelings and impressions, which soothes you into a completely relaxed condition. This sound can carry you wherever you want to go, lets your spirit flow freely like a bird to hover with spanned wings and seemingly motionless over the deep ravines and meadows of your own unconciousness. It’s your own personality and willingness to surrender to your ego that lets this musical mantra take you to places you never ever may have discovered without it.
The second piece of almost equal length on this album is called ‘Larme d’Heike’, which means Tear of Heike. An almost stakkato like rhythm displays an underlying carpet that is carried throughout the whole extatic display. Although also presented as a drone sounds come and go and yet, the mantra theme remains intact. Here a certain aggressive approach can be sensed, and that agressiveness is not directed against something or someone but reflects the forces of inner emotions. They are welling up like the hot waters of a geyser, pushed from the endless powers of inner pain and finally freed emotions. All of this fades away, when feelings calm down, and at the end we experience a mental cleaning, the healing of old wounds; the water calms down and the storm vanishes into a sea of tranquillity…
Tobias’s first work is a well balanced one that draws the listener closer to his inner self. He has accomplished this with a quiet attitude, no screaming, yelling, no violent outbursts. Still, this fine and sensitively directed music will touch everyone who is ready to turn her-or himself over to its power. They will find a treasure of self induced psychological effects and personal experience. Well worth listening to.
By Fred Wheeler
Homepage: Feu Follet
Homepage: Einzeleinheit Records
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