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Album:
Gebrauchsmusik
(LAMP006)

Artist:
Marcus Fjellström

Release Date:
November 2006

Tracklisting:
Reanimation Music
War Music, 1st Perspective
Fairytale Music, 1st Perspective
Dance Music, 1st Perspective
Death Music, 1st Perspective
Dance Music, 2nd Perspective
War Music, 2nd Perspective
Festivity Music
Art Music
Fairytale Music, 2nd Perspective
Consolation Music
War Music, 3rd Perspective
Death Music, 2nd Perspective

Gebrauchsmusik is German for ‘Utility Music’, and Swedish composer and producer Marcus Fjellström’s second excursion into post-classical experimentation is exactly that; thirteen tracks with each one written to suit a certain theme. War, art, festivity, sadness, death and resurrection are all interpreted by Fjellström in his unique style, taking a classical framework and distorting, confusing and manipulating it to suit his needs.

String sections are crushed into a smokey Lynchian haze while staccato plucking is twisted to give out an almost Autechre-like resonance. While listening to ‘Gebrauchsmusik’ it can be difficult to distinguish where the acoustic instruments stop and the electronic manipulation begins, a line which has been approached somewhat gingerly for some time now and rarely managed so
effortlessly. The obvious comment on listening to music as unashamedly visual as this is that it sounds like a film score, Fjellström here has gone all the way on ‘Gebrauchsmusik’ writing music which almost requires to be slotted into a piece of cinema – ‘War Music’ should be paired with the disturbing images of battle, ‘Fairytale Music’ should skip and wisp around an enchanted forest and ‘Death Music’ should be signaling a funeral procession in it’s solemn grandeur.

Taking influence from John Cage, Morton Feldman and David Lynch’s right hand man Angelo Badalamenti, Fjellström has developed a style which manages to transcend the current classical/electronic explosion. It is clear from the offset that the young musician has a deep understanding of what has come
before as he blends elements of musique concrete, avant-classical and early electronic experimentations into his compositions. Instead of merely coming across as an homage, this album genuinely acts as a step forward in a crowded genre.

REVIEWS:

Almost Cool
January 2007
On his second album Gebrauchsmusik, young Swedish composer and producer Marcus Fjellstrom has created a release of eerie post classical music that doesn't pretend to be friendly or warm. In fact, the title of the release roughly translates (German) to "utility music," and his squirming compositions bristle with electronically-filtered strings, prepared piano, and percussion. The result is an album that's definitely on the uneasy side, with track titles that reference both War, Death, and Fairytales (but certainly not ones with happy endings).

"Reanimation Music" opens the release and sounds somewhat like you might expect given the title, as layers of heavily-filtered voices twitch and moan while trying to break free from some sort of digital morass as sloshing percussion and filtered woodwinds make an even more unsteady backdrop. "War Music, 1st Perspective" follows, and it's easily one of the best tracks on the entire release, as skittering, chromatic beats swarm together and create a rustling backdrop for some broken piano notes and pitch-bent strings that sound downright horror show.

As mentioned above, both "Fairy Tale, 1st Perspective" and "Fairy Tale, 2nd Perspective" are definitely more on the haunting side of things than something you'd want to play for a small child before bed. The former features muffled voices speaking out some unintelligible words under more dissonant strings, while the latter is flat-out evil, with the voice again coming back as more distorted screams and moans play out alongside queasy string stabs and gritty static.

So the album goes, with themes being revisited depending on the track titles and ideas being presented. All three parts of War Music are more rhythmic, with chattering percussion and heavy tones, while the Dance Music pieces take on slightly lighter feels, but still move as if encumbered by grit and decay. As expected, the two Death Music pieces are deep drones that are dark enough to imagine them simply being the accompaniment to having your own casket lowered into the ground. Even though the total running length of Gebrauchsmusik is under fifty minutes, it feels longer because of the cold and oppressive compositions. If you're interested in wallowing, this one won't nudge you out from under a black cloud.
rating: 7.25

Textura
January 2007
If Marcus Fjellström's Gebrauchsmusik (German for ‘Utility Music') appears to suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), it's purely by design as each of its thirteen pieces was written with a unique theme—war, art, festivity, sadness, death, and resurrection—in mind. Fjellström's provocative second sojourn into post-classical electro-acoustic composition and uncompromising but in no way displeasing; if anything, it signifies a radical move forward for the Swedish composer. The material thoroughly blurs the line between electronic, Musique concrète, and classical realms with many pieces unique fusions of all three types.
The album opens unsettlingly with the macabre “Reanimation Music” wherein a dead body seemingly is dragged along the muddy ground while a possessed female choir quivers dissonantly alongside; equally disturbing is the dirge “Festivity Music” whose sickly sounds seem to rise from the catacombs. With their thrumming percussive clatter and jittery mechano-rhythms, pieces like “War Music, 1st Perspective” and “Dance Music, 2nd Perspective” call to mind George Antheil's Ballet Mécanique. In “Art Music,” Fjellström appears to play the insides and outside of a piano and then shreds the results using an electronic blender while the ethereal “Consolation Music” features what sounds like a bow being drawn across the edge of a saw against a glass orchestra backing. Though hints of other music surface—“War Music, 2nd Perspective” comes straight out of the Chain Reaction bunker, the funereal “Death Music, 1st Perspective” evokes the horn-drenched haze of Ingram Marshall's Fog Tropes, and the spectral “Fairytale Music, 1st Perspective,” with its muffled voice, ripples of vinyl crackle, and flowing orchestral tones, could pass for a Philip Jeck homage—Gebrauchsmusik transcends such derivative moments due to its remarkable stylistic reach.

The Wire Magazine
January 2007
An interwining jigsaw puzzle of orchestral composition cohabitin with digitally mottled electronics, Gebrauchsmusik is comprised of 13 pieces, each of wich is inscribed with a highly charged allegory, covering such subject matter as war, death, fairytales, festivity, and art. Deliberately confusing these allegorical elements, Swedish composer Marcus Fjellström seeks to present his "utility music" as a grand statement about the human condition. He may be an alchemist in transforming the electronic in to the symphonic and vice versa, but Fjellströms ability to apply his aesthetic craft to the conceptual conceits of album is sorely lacking. The lugubrious atonal cluster of "Festivity Music" are far from being jubilant, and the muffled vocals and infernal crackel of "Fairytale Music" are far more unsettling than the wooden-horse clomp of "War Music". Even if these are intended as reconstitutions of archetyps, Fjellströms structures are baroque music ellipses that complicate rather than illuminate

by Jim Haynes