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Oh my, Fievel Is Glauque are coming to Oxford for the first time with Bernice in tow!https://daily.bandcamp.com/album-of-the-day/fievel-is-glauque-flaming-swords-review
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/fievel-is-glauque-flaming-swords/
https://bernice.bandcamp.com/album/cruisin
Their rising popularity has been as organic as it has been accidental. An international band composed of American bandleading keyboardist Zach Phillips, French singer Ma Clément, and a rotating cast of musicians spread out across the globe, they released a Bandcamp compilation album of live mono cassette recordings titled God's Trashmen Sent To Right The Mess on New Years Day of 2021 with only a single Instagram post to promote it. Similar to most releases you might find from Zach Phillips’ former label OSR Tapes or his approximately fifty other albums under various names (see Blanche Blanche Blanche), it received some cult fandom, but Fievel Is Glauque was pushed to a larger audience through a Bandcamp Daily article and Needle Drop coverage. Gradually, through word of mouth, God's Trashmen Sent To Right The Mess has gone on to sell thousands of copies, and the band’s reach has continued to grow. They are currently touring the US as support for Stereolab.
Zach Phillips and Ma Clément met while Zach was staying in Brussels, Belgium, where a mutual friend connected them in a bid to convince Zach to make an album during his stay there. While on route to meet, Zach hit his head on a street pole and was in need of care. As a sign of fate, Ma was also a trained nurse and was able to help clear him of any severe consequences of concussion. After a short practice the following day, the two fell into working together and gradually found themselves in a years-long musical partnership.
During the pandemic, Zach moved to Brussels to focus on the band and the two released the mono live compilation God's Trashmen Sent To Right The Mess. Whereas that compilation was primarily composed of Zach’s writing, Flaming Swords sees Phillips and Clément working together as a composing duo. Adapting to a strongly enforced curfew and limited social contact, the two focused heavily on the writing of Flaming Swords over the next few months. Lyrically switching between English and Ma’s native tongue of French, the lyrics are created in an unusual process involving psychoanalytic dialectic, automatic writing, and interlinguistic translation of apparent gibberish. “Musically, Ma directed melodic impetus and I directed harmonic and rhythmic framing. Lyrically, we fought and embraced our initial impulses alternatingly; above all, we tried to trust and document the psychodynamics of the process itself rather than attempting to express concrete, prefab emotional or intellectual messaging. This approach to writing is intended to promote poetry while avoiding alibis and the hall-of-mirrors reproduction of excessive self-identification,” Zach comments. Just before Zach returned to the US to resume living in Brooklyn, he and Ma put together a septet and Flaming Swords was recorded live in its entirety over one day in the summer of 2021.
In similar fashion to the band’s original mono compilation, Flaming Swords was released on November 25th, 2022 (Thanksgiving holiday). The album was mixed by Ryan Power and mastered by Joe LaPorta.
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Common Ground, 37-38 Little Clarendon St, Oxford, OX1 2HU, United Kingdom
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