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/////////////////RECENT PRESS......... ::Accolades for BRG002 The Fun Years / Life-Sized Psychoses:: ////Igloo Magazine(.com) : Nice online magazine and information resource largley based around electronic music : (09.16.07) Oddly enough, The Fun Years’ Life-Sized Psychosis somehow manages to mimic the train I’m on while I write this. I hear echoes. I could talk about equipment, but frankly I don’t know enough about these specific equipments to give ‘em snark or praise about the lack of integrity or innovation in their delay pedal, thus perpetuating that interminable pissing contest that values novelty over nuance. So, all I can really talk about is the fun I’m having during these fun years. So, we have a cacophony of voices: Highs --not screeching, but soft tonal-feedback gently establishes notes in the scale. Mids --acoustic guitar melody repeats and repeats. Bass --static rumble fills out the rest of the available harmonic frequencies. Melody --random noises and bursts, a quiet chorus of glitch with occasional pops. But keep in mind that it’s all very soothing. Not in the ambient/trance/(we’re trying to blow your mind)-kind of way, but the combination of these elements produces the elusive drone (repetitive build-up of timbre, dynamics, texture) that post-rock artists tend to seek and for good reason! (An earlier The Fun Years album is titled Now That’s What I call Drone, Volume 4, not surprisingly). A rich and compelling drone is not easy to create for anyone, let alone economically disadvantaged youngsters who are forced to abandon the shiny delicacies of Guitar Center in favor of much cheaper (but much hipper) tape recorders, an undoubtedly chaotic mesh of interwoven cords+mixers+wires+personal computers, and other various, maybe even homemade electro-devices. And of course, let’s not forget the electric, acoustic, and bass guitars (mashed-up into a baritone guitar by Ben Recht), an old organ, Roland D-10 maybe, a turntable (allmusic.com calls Isaac Sparks a turntablist), drums, and other rock stuffs. For this is indeed post-rock, which likes to take all of the post-punk/alternative rock instruments and structural elements that it (post-rock) [I’m personifying a concept!] grew up listening to and then chew them up and spit them back out in a way that can only be signified by the “post” prefix. Right? In an earlier Igloo review I wondered whether Post Toasties marked a simultaneous departure from and innovation of the classic Toasties from a by-gone era. It was a joke. So now I’m knee deep in track four, after track three gave me a somewhat interesting reprise of track one. I’m not entirely sure what happened to track two. I think that track one was just too long, so they chopped it in two, not wanting to lose the momentum of the aforementioned drone. The drone which changes slightly at track three into... well... more glitchy, staticy-tape-recorder-sample-based drone. But it’s still really good drone. Look, it would too easy to call this album boring. It’s not! Maybe it’s a response to more interesting albums (har har). It drones beautifully, The Fun Years is a richly layered meditation on static, noise, glitch, post-glitch, and of course distorted guitars. Ooooh, but here in track four it starts to get really beautiful. Thank god Brian Eno influenced everyone to compliment whatever music they were creating with beautiful, angelic pad sounds like in the beginning of “Where the Streets Have No Name.” From the inclusion of these pad sounds, I deduce that The Fun Years truly wants to “tear down the walls” that hold them inside. I would even argue that they want to “reach out and touch the flame”, but do they actually do it on this album? I’m not sure. I mean, I love the noises, I love the drone, I find it very soothing, fun, compelling to listen to (their drone really doesn’t even get boring), which means that this is chock full of great ideas and tasteful engineering; but I’m not sure that I hear and feel you, my fun year friends. I want to bask in the glorious sweetness of your hearts and souls, drink your blood, experience your special times, recognize your life which is like my own so then I can feel more alive and less alone, right? Otherwise, what’s the fucking point of this mechanism that delivers albums to me and reviews to you, dear artists and readers? Life-Sized Psychosis is out now on Barge. Chris Lindsey, Contributor for Igloo Magazine 2007-09-16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ////audiversity.com : A fantastic and well written music blog out of Chicago, one of our new daily reads....check 'em out : The Fun Years – Life-Sized Psychoses / Barge Recordings As a record store clerk, I can break down the majority of vinyl-consuming customers into two completely polar groupings. Category A (for Anal): The customer is uber-obsessed with the pristine condition of his wax. He demands to see each individual record before even considering the purchase, and moves strategically under the brightest light in the store to gaze knowledgeably at every individual groove of the disc. He often passes on the majority of the stack he brought to the counter, and gets pissy when a new record is not completely sealed. Crackles and pops while listening are a dire annoyance and must be avoided at all costs. Category B (for Beginner): The customer could care less about what his vinyl looks like, and often has to be asked three or four times if he would like to see the condition of the vinyl before purchasing because he doesn’t understand the question. Mostly keying in on the very used $3 classics, he doesn’t really understand the difference between fair and good condition, and is mostly just interested in owning vinyl just because vinyl looks good on your shelf (and it does). Crackles and pops while listening are the least of his concerns, because check it out, Blonde on Blonde on wax… sweet. I prefer a Category B customer to an A any day, if only because they are much easier to appease from a clerk standpoint, but both parties are somewhat missing the point. The best breed of customer is Category C (for casual, curious, courageous and carefree); they are digging for the enjoyment of discovering new sounds, paying attention to the records’ condition while also being completely open the unpredictable array of options surrounding them. They will pass on that slightly over-priced, ultra-rare album in fair condition, but won’t hesitate to drop a few extra dollars on the seldom seen, but not impossible to find record that is in very good condition; along with picking up a few cheap distraught pieces simply because of the artwork is intriguing and a couple reasonably priced classics in the process. Category C customers aren’t afraid of the crackles and pops and hiss of used vinyl, because it adds a semblance of antiquity and character, idiosyncrasies in a mass-produced product. Granted they don’t want it to overpower the music transcribed into those worn grooves, but a little fireplace-like crackle accompanying a pastoral acoustic guitar picking can add an even deeper ambient mood to the somber piece. It is these kinds of unpredictabilities you get with analog rather than digital medium that not only continue to make such aging products as vinyl still relevant and sought after, but also inspire musicians and artists to explore the sonic possibilities of the unwanted by-product of the imperfect medium. There are only so many traditional chords you can truly explore as a musician, but there are an infinite amount of ambient sounds that can be harnessed. Experimenting with turntable noise is nothing new and has pretty much existed as long as the turntable itself. From John Cage to Jan Jelinek, musicians who grow bored with traditional sounds utilize the fullest extent of their tools at hand to push music in completely new directions. The practice of sampling those previously unwanted crackles, pops and hisses of used vinyl to concoct completely new compositions is, again, a technique that is not brand new, but when strategically utilized along side more melodic instrumentation, it can produce audio wonders. The Fun Years, an experimental New England duo, balance these opposing musical approaches seamlessly. With Ben Recht’s slowly progressing melodic baritone guitar rhythms swelling and ebbing, Isaac Sparks intertwines boundary-less samples of the aforementioned by-product noise of worn vinyl. Their combined music crackles and hums with the solemnness and warm hues of an expiring fire; it delicately soothes like a fingertip massage with blissful drones of gracefully cascading melodic tones and unobtrusive white noise. It is not quite complete ambience, but often escapes your immediate consciousness because of its caringly slow progressions. Following the Barge Recordings introduction compilation, Innature, featuring similar ambient-swirling artists like Tim Hecker, Bird Show, Loren Connors, Geoff Mullen and The Kallikak Family, BRG 002 is The Fun Years’ Life-Sized Psychoses, the duo’s first official release after three-years of limited self-released CD-Rs. Like the album’s artwork, the music consists of finely flowing colors and subtly shifting tones beneath the natural time-deteriorated texture of ambient noise. A bit more melodic than most of the artists listed above, Recht and Sparks aim for more dreamlike atmospheres than the sometimes abrasive touch of a soundscape artist like Hecker, and progress in Reich-derived, slowly shifting harmonies like those of Jelinek or Stars of the Lid. With five tracks, all but one of which clock over the ten-minute mark, Life-Sized Psychoses will meander gracefully for the complete fifty minutes without you ever noticing a track-break. The main difference between each of the songs is more the choice of guitar tone and sampled noise than the actual song structure. For example, while “Powerball Annie,” “Softly as Stilts” and “Garbage Man, Poet” all progress by a slightly shifting melody loop on the guitar slowly overtaken by increasingly coarse static ambience, they transcend redundancy by tone differentiation. “Annie” creates the impression of fire crackle undercut by Sandy Bull on depressants, “Stilts” utilizes more straight-static sounding noise paired with flickering high frequencies from the guitar that sounds as if it was recorded through a metal pipe, and “Garbage” progresses with slowly pitch-shifting picking that is completely enveloped by organ-like metallic harmonies and wave after wave of consuming pink noise. Life-Sized Psychoses should also be applauded for its accessibility; it could very well act as a starting point for listeners entering the world of sometimes completely structure-less ambient experimentation. Not that it is without its challenging moments, but there is enough continuous melodic tension to keep more traditional music fans appeased as well as the soundscape lovers. You can almost think of it as the Category C of ambient music where Category A is complete an utter hook-free ambience and Category B are just utilizing the more generic characteristics of the style because it adds a certain antiquated feel to straight-ahead music. The Fun Years are a happy medium; they understand the pros and cons of being at each polar end, inspired by both the classics and the unknown, and aim for a balance between idiosyncrasy, unpredictability and accessibility. Longtime fans of Kranky, ~scape, Type or other similar ambient-leaning labels should definitely take note of The Fun Years and Barge Recordings, because both will be most likely blipping on your music radar in the near future review by mpardaiolo for audiversity.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ////The Wire : Adventures in modern music....indeed : Pop Artist Jasper Johns rejected abstract painting because, he complained, people would always insist on finding objects that were not there. His solution was to paint objects - targets, numbers, flags - so familiar the viewer would look through them. Only then, as they ignored the familiar object, could they experience pure line, form, colour and texture. The New York duo ( actually, Boston... -ian ) of baritone guitarist Ben Recht and turntablist Isaac Sparks perform the same reversal with sound on Life-Sized Psychoses to mesmerizing and extraordinary effect. Sparks has sampled that most familiar of audio artefacts, the surface noise of vinyl. It is a noise we train ourselves to listen through. Yet here he layers it and controls it until it forms textures as sensual and natural as the grain of wood, the honeyed ripples of tortoise shell, the veins of marble or indeed the rumpled encaustic of a Johns painting. Consequently, these soundscapes are abstract in a profound and naked way few other recordings achieve. The five pieces form a 50 minute whole. From the Wurlitzer trill that opens "Powerball Annie", the abstract crackle envelops us in it's warmth and splendour. Along with it Recht repeats slithering figures on his baritone guitar. Pitched just below a regular guitar makes his lines thick and lithe like feeling of a velvet rope between your fingers. The repetitions soothe and smoothe the figures into the sound. And with it always, through to the closing rapture of "Garbage Man, Poet", is the shimmering sumptuous sparkle of static. A beautiful, blissful abstract album. - Nick Southgate July 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ////Textura : fantastic monthly online zine : Barge Recordings made an auspicious debut last year with the Innature compilation and maintains the high batting average with its first artist release Life-Sized Psychosis by The Fun Years, a duo consisting of turntablist Isaac Sparks and baritone guitarist Ben Recht. Don't equate two ‘instruments' with minimal, however, as the musicians generate thick, coagulant drones of ‘audio magma' on the album's five densely textured soundscapes (four of them longer than ten minutes each). As one piece bleeds into the next, one might just as easily broach it is a single, fifty-minute work. The two loop tiny cells into rhythms that induce a hypnotic effect through repetition yet their cumulative masses also gradually intensify in volume and detail. Naturally one thinks of Philip Jeck when the turntable's decayed sounds enter the equation but Recht's presence within the mass helps The Fun Years establish a unique persona. Recht isn't a soloist, however, but a texturalist who embeds his playing into Sparks' blurred swirl (though his biting lines do assume a more front-line role in “Softy As Stilts”). “Powerball Annie” begins with a brief passage of guitar-led jazz interplay that morphs into a becalmed, pop-and-crackle-laden stream of muffled guitar fragments, speaking voices, and assorted other noise, on top of which Recht's guitar repeats a simple rising theme. That repetition merges with the metronomic loop of a starburst accent to produce a lulling movement, until the music swells in volume and density to reach an even hazier plateau. A more pronounced meter prods “In Case You Had Any Doubts....” while “d>>2” shimmers and shudders like a set of chimes whose sounds are faintly detected beneath layers of radio interference. At disc's end, guitars multiply into a near-Frippertronics mass before being sucked into Sparks' vortex during the rather meditative dronescape “Garbage Man, Poet.” July 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ////The Boston Phoenix : Boston weekly rag : In experimental music, there are constructs of noise and dissonance and there are landscapes of ambient textures. The Fun Years (a/k/a un-Lockedgrooved Ben Recht and fellow Bostonian Isaac Sparks) belong to the second group. With softly disintegrating turntable loops and simply strummed guitar, the duo aim for an oscillating sense of calm, never static, but never jarring, either. Four of the five tracks clock in at more than 10 minutes, so each simple groove gets to develop at its optimum pace. The album’s fulcrum, a four-minute song obliquely titled “D>>2”, breathes with metallic sighs. Recht is an accomplished electronic musician, but his way with a guitar has a gentle human touch, and Sparks lets his turntable crackle with all the imperfections of the format. The result is a kind of Sunday-afternoon porch album that can live with you, not an avant-garde piece meant to be played in the presence of the correct company. The wavering tracks never break (each track flows into the next), so you may not even know that one song has begun and another ended. That’s not to say this album is for everyone — Recht’s doom-like touches on “Softly As Stilts” are a bit hair-raising. But like other drone-ambient artists, the Fun Years may have a broader audience than their avant-garde label might lead you to think. - David Day May 29th 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ////Foxy Digitalis : a wonderful and very prolific web-zine / experimental label : For any collector of music on vinyl, a scratch or a skip can be a heartbreaking sound. Conversely, there is a certain comfort in hearing the familiar static of a well-loved album, where each crack or pop is worn into memory alongside the instruments or vocals. These imperfections really become their own instrument. By adding guitar embellishment and emphasizing the innate familiarity of their worn samples, the Fun Years succeed in harnessing the sounds of decomposing vinyl into their own welcoming sound. To start, it should be clear that “Life-Sized Psychoses” is best enjoyed as one long piece of music. The song breaks are more of a formality, signifying the arrival of new ideas or sounds to the overall equation. Almost surprisingly, the only instruments put to use on the album are the turntables of Isaac Sparks and the baritone guitar of Ben Recht. The sound produced, on the one hand is very modern, but on the other hand, sits deeply in the past. On the modern side, the sound loops and repeating grooves feel like they could be put to use as high-quality hip-hop beats. Indeed, much of the music here would not feel at all out of place on a downtempo Wu-Tang or Dälek track. Additionally, there is a feeling of contemporary experimental music with the heavy emphasis on drones, ambience, loops, and other sound textures. While, the turntable’s repeating tones and samples contribute greatly to this sound, the guitar also lends heaps of groovy and abstract sounds. Each half of the instrumental equation seems to compensate for the other, depending on the musical landscape of the moment. When there is more of a beat coming from the turntables, the guitar is less predictable, but when the vinyl sample is more abstract, the guitar locks into a tighter rhythm. The antique sound most obviously rises from the pieces of ancient, scratched vinyl that are sampled. As it so often does, the record fuzz works becomes its own instrument in every part. Each sample of instrument or voice comes along with its own set of static that repeats to form a layer of light percussion, almost like light brushes on a snare drum. Each scratch and imperfection in the sample quickly becomes well-trod territory to the listener and soon, every sound is anticipated, until a new one rolls in to replace it. There are many compelling layers of sound to peel back on this album, but really “Life-Sized Psychoses” stands out because it caters to both new and familiar feelings at the same time. 8/10 -- Matt Blackall (8 May, 2007) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ////Nothing At All.net : nice little online zine : Now this is something different, turntable ambiance and baritone guitar drone with no drummers and no singers with botoxed lips of doom or high fashion celebrity links, actually I don't know that any of those celebrity skins would even know what drone music could be but anyway, it sort of set the scene which is generally the thing i find hardest when writing reviews, and this album is by no means an easy one to write about. Anyway, this duo from NYC have released their debut album proper as one of the first releases on the pretty cool Barge Recordings label which first came to light with their brilliant Innature compilation. The first thing that pretty much hits is how dark and cold this album is yet it still retains the warmth of the baritone guitar and the underlying human presence. Each of the five tracks build up layers of thick yet not too sickly drones and soundscapes. Each track flows along slowly with the ever changing yet ultra minimal pops and crackle of turntable loops and samples. Never speeding up to more than a snails pace yet nowhere near as slow as other drone experimental guitarists Earth. Four of the five tracks here range well over the 8 minute mark which gives time for the music to expand and slowly fill the available space without feeling rushed, and each is different enough to be a separate song yet as close to each other to be listened to as a whole piece of work. Near the end of the album things get a little heavier, Softy As Stilts leans more to into the darkness with low end fuzzed out guitar licks, yet it never borders on the doom side of the genre for there is lightness in the cold darkness. At no point does any of this become depressing, although at times unsettling it's low-fi soundscapes have made this a brilliantly captivating and intriguing piece which seems to reveal something new with each listen. Certainly a band and label to keep an eye on. ~ reviewed by rich on 2007-04-08 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ////Boomkat : spectacular online record shop based in Manchester, UK : 'Life Sized Psychoses' is the debut album from American duo The Fun Years and the first 'proper' album to come from the very promising Barge camp. Last year the label issued one of the finest compilations we'd heard in a while ('Innature') and they seem to be continuing the high bar of quality with this absolutely fabulous disc. With one musician (Isaac Sparks) using turntables and effects, and the other (Ben Recht) on baritone guitar, the two create a hazy half-speed ambience which lies somewhere in limbo between Fennesz, The Gentlemen Losers, Machinefabriek, Vincent Gallo and Philip Jeck. That might be hard to bring to mind so let me help you out a bit - Isaac Sparks sounds like he's busy in the corner of a broken down old farmhouse, scraping motifs from old jazz and easy listening records as Ben Recht plays small riffs and improvisations over the top. Not that this is necessarily the recipe for success, but this duo have a deft understanding of each others' strengths and limitations and across fifty minutes never make a misstep. It's interesting actually to hear this kind of atmospheric, half-submerged music being produced in this manner, maybe the only comparison I can think of in this respect would be Mountains, who share a similar understanding for working with guitar and noisier elements. There's a sense that Recht is tempering these pieces, all hands on the controls as Sparks makes magic happen with his distinctive baritone guitar sound - there's just that feeling that although 'Life Sized Psychoses' might be a debut album, these guys could have been doing this forever. Warm and calming in some parts, icy and noise-laden in others, it's an album I know I will be playing over and over (I've had it for a few weeks now and it's not been far from the cd player). I want to say there's a narrative but that isn't what makes The Fun Years stand out, it's the way they avoid the trappings of ever being too academic or too laboured, and beneath all the trapped nostalgia of record loops and familiar motifs you get the feeling that this is the work of two musicians who are actually enjoying themselves. Utterly entrancing and totally beautiful - highly recommended. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ////Aquarius Records : these guys are peerless. find our records and many other strange and wonderful things at this San Francisco based shop (online too!) : Band names come in strange zeitgeists,
don't they? We've had waves of "The Something", "Wolf
Something" and "Black Something" bands, now it seems
it is "Year" time. So far we've noted Capitol Years,
The Early Years, Year Future, and The New Year. Now The Fun Years
come drifting into view. It does seem to be a bit of a misnomer
though. Indeed, this group's name as well as their album and song
titles all strike us as being very incongruous with the sounds
they make. We sort of expecting some doleful pop music or something,
but nothing would have prepared us for the murky muted beauty of
Life-Sized Psychoses. Every track a washed out minimal landscape
of record crackle, bits of hiss and pop, a dense washed out backdrop
for the guitar to sort of drift and shimmer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ////Little Radio : nifty little online web-zine : The Fun Years fell out of my mailbox at home yesterday, which I rarely see music-related items for anymore. It's usually a toss-up of bad rock, embarrassing folk-pop-crap, and random demos from bands I've never heard of but happen to have 10,000 + friends on Myspace. The Fun Years are the exception to those experiences and prove why you should always go through every cd/demo that is placed before you. Life-Sized Psychoses is hypnotic post-rock and organs/keys meets some kids sampling the Twilight Zone and an electric razor. I also imagine that most of the samples are what you'd hear if you woke up with a bugs in your ears, or something like that. Indescribable, yet sounding like a page right out of a National Geographic magazine, these instrumental passages are pretty bold and convincing, and sometimes reminiscent of Belong's fantastic October Language. Almost every song on this 5-track album is over 10 minutes in length. The first being "Powerball Annie" oozing like a broken, scratchy record with hammond organ and atmospheric samples pouring everywhere. "In Case You Had Any Doubts" features a clean bass melody that's barely in the mix while more insects force their way into your inner ear canal. There's a theme here. "D>>2" is more futuristic and metallic as the Fun Years ditch the scratchy samples and opt for a more polished and resonanating backdrop. "Softly as Stills" is the most "musical" with distorted echoes of free-form guitar over what sounds like someone trying to light a fire with handfuls of crumpled up newspaper. "Garbage Man, Poet" gets really intense around the 7 minute mark with waves of overlapping synths and resonators, a beautiful way to finish an album focused on sound manipulation and simplicity. The Fun Years will probably bore the hell out of most of you. But that's too bad. The ideas and placement of sound are striking and shimmery during these 10 minutes epics. This is like soundtrack music only there's an underlying story in there that's almost audible, but invokes imagery to an even higher degree.. -Scott McDonald . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ////Loop Magazine : cool web-zine devoted to more experimental electronic music, they are based in Chile....I kept their review in both Spanish and English : espanol: Guillermo Escudero ingles: Guillermo Escudero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ////////OTHER PRESS//// BRG001 : INNATURE : VARIOUS ARTISTS BRG002 : THE FUN YEARS : LIFE-SIZED PSYCHOSES BRG003 : GEOFF MULLEN : ARMORY RADIO BRG004 : MGR / XELA : BARGE SPLIT SERIES VOL. I
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