The Plop label out of Japan has been my favorite discovery of 2005 so far. From what I can tell, FilFla is composing tracks primarily out of fragmented guitar loops, and while this ground has been covered ad infinitum by now, Frame is still an intimate and beautiful record that brings out the promise of computer-aided guitar composition.Plop
FilFla is the one-man project of Tokyo-based musician Keiichi Sugimoto (who also records as Fourcolor.) His latest effort, Frame, occasionally combines the microtonal melodies and whipping, looping guitar plucks with punchy programmed beats that help these otherwise amorphous compositions grow into something more defined and structured. His ability to take sparks of imagination and clips of sound and twirls of synth and noise and pull them together into songs is what gives Frame an edge over so many like-minded records that I’ve heard recently.
FilFla is the one-man project of Tokyo-based musician Keiichi Sugimoto (who also records as Fourcolor.) His latest effort, Frame, occasionally combines the microtonal melodies and whipping, looping guitar plucks with punchy programmed beats that help these otherwise amorphous compositions grow into something more defined and structured. His ability to take sparks of imagination and clips of sound and twirls of synth and noise and pull them together into songs is what gives Frame an edge over so many like-minded records that I’ve heard recently.
The record exists in that strange netherworld where it all sounds organic and natural, played by human hands at some point, and yet so completely impossible and artificially constructed that it’s almost hard to process. More than anything else, I love Frame for its willful abandonment of any need to be dark, moody, serious, goofy, broken, or otherwise stuck in any one direction. The songs pick a direction and just go there, along paths that are sometimes springy and sunny, sometimes more melancholy, but never so wrapped up in themselves as to be melodramatic. That quality makes this a record that’s good to put on in those times of day when I’m not in a particular mood, and not feeling as though I’m leaning any particular way. FilFla takes a minimalist approach to building (and indeed titling) his songs, and the result is a record that never says or does more than it needs to in order to gain its affect.
Along with the Fenton record, this new disc from FilFla is a welcome bit of calm in a year that has otherwise been soaked in industrial-strength dread. I’d never heard of the Plop label before these recent records, but I’m certainly going to be looking for it going forward.
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