Flössin - Lead Singer

[KaOz]

You grow up thinking "noise" is the sound of rage and destruction, of dishes smashing against the wall or screaming voices or cars hitting telephone poles. But outpourings of joy can just lead to chaos and extreme volume. Noise is simply what happens when there's "too much," when containers are filled and things spill over the edges. The actual feelings and sensations involved are wildly variable.

Freewheeling noise is what Flössin is up to, which is surprising considering who is at the center of the band. San Francisco guitarist Christopher Willits spearheads Flössin, but this outlet is miles away from the focused and meditative micro-music he makes under his own name (the best of which is on the excellent 12k label). Here, Willits collaborates with Miguel Depedro (better known as Kid606) on computer and Zach Hill (of Hella) on drums for an improv project in which the trio serve up an unholy racket with a smile.

Word is that Flössin may one day involve a different set of players, but Hill definitely dominates on Lead Singer. Fans of Hella will have no trouble picking out his style, which manages to be both nimble and heavy, but here, he applies his considerable chops to something more loose and unpredictable. At first, Hill sounds like he's soloing constantly, stringing one insanely complicated roll onto the next like Moon's "My Generation" outro extended to album length, but upon repeated listens, patterns in his sound emerge that are sympathetic to what Willits and Depedro are up to.

Though Hill's role is easy to ascertain, with Willits and Depedro it's hard to tell who's doing what. Since Willits typically plays with his guitar processed via laptop, his tone can go anywhere at any given moment, and Depedro seems content to fill space with drone and assorted sound effects. On the third track (titles appear on the sleeve, but they're crossed out with a sharpie), his guitar becomes a singing sword-- something like Fripp tunneling through Eno's delays-- and his mournful extended tones against Hill's triple-time hits make for an effective contrast. The fifth track contains some speedy atonal riffs that definitely sound "guitar-like" inside a gray cloud of feedback, and then Depedro sets off-kilter loops of machine noise against Willits' anti-guitar heroics. Highlights come when Depedro and Willits lock together to spin out vaguely discernable melodies that somehow get broken in all the excitement.

Occasional clusters of CD skips appear to remind us that there is computer software in the room, but Lead Singer sounds strangely analog and most certainly live, with a strong dose of room ambience and a recording with such heavy bleeding it may as well be mono. Most importantly Lead Singer sounds bashed out for the sheer pleasure of it, and the thrill is contagious. If loud, rough, and noisy music once seemed an outlet for anger, bands like Flössin show how much happiness there can be in unbridled sound. [Mark Richardson, Pitchfork Review]