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Fenton, "Pup"
Pup is another entry into the highly nuanced, subtle, and delicate world ofminimalism that at one time would have been called “ambient” but nowgoes by titles like “lowercase.” There’s too much of this sortof thing for me to be able to stay abreast of, but Dan Abrams’ work asFenton is solid and enjoyable.Plop
Although Fenton creator Dan Abrams is from California, this disc comes all the way from Japan, by way of theJapanese label Plop. It's a record formorning listening: every song feels like a beginning of sorts to ajourney that is never exactly spelled out or completed. The songs arebuilt up from loops of pristine guitar plucking and the artifacts of along, long delay time. While I see music like this played out all thetime by folks with a single guitar and a loop pedal, it’s obvious thatAbrams is not just knocking these tunes out in a matter of minutes andrendering them to tape. There isn’t much to the compositions,but they grow organically, and they are finely balanced and carefully mixedto reward deep listening. A disc like this finds me willing to acceptit differently at different times.
Without the time and solitudenecessary to devote complete attention to Pup, the recordbecomes a pleasant background texture to my day, but something that isultimately not recognizable or distinguished. Given an hour to sit downwith headphones or near field monitors, the record plays altogetherdifferently and the subtle layers of sound never get boring becausethere is almost always something else to explore. At other times, whenI want to concentrate but can’t, I imagine that Pup isthe basis of another record somewhere with drums and voices and a bandusing simple looped guitar as a foundation rather than the focus.
This is the nature of music like this, and why it’s so hard for me withmy schedule to get into it fully. I suspect that the tensionthere is exactly why music like this needs to exist: to give us areason to slow down, zone out, and bathe ourselves in microscopic beadsof sound. I only wish that were possible more often.
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