Down on Fasciinatiion Street
The Faints fifth full-length release, Fasciinatiion, stands as a study in taking over the means of productionand at the same time, wrestling with the vagaries of technology.
In the late 1990s, the hyperactive, dance-addled Omaha, Neb., quintetwhich has long associated itself with its hometown label Saddle Creek Recordswas one of a handful of bands that fused the percussiveness and angularity of post-punk with the synth-based inflections of new wave to spawn what was later dubbed electroclashand dance punk. Danse Macabre, The Faints 2001 breakthrough, drew scores of fans, followed by Wet from Birth in 2004, which solidified the bands spot in the indie-dance pantheon.
For its first record in four years, The Faint decided to try and control as many aspects of its musical output as possiblefrom its recording and production to its actual release. But the band couldnt completely tame one part of the equation: the technology on which all these depend, which led to the albums misspelled title.
Todd [Fink, The Faints singer] has a tendency to break every piece of technology he gets his hands on. And ultimately his keyboard on his laptop was malfunctioning, and every time he would type an i it would type two i s, explained Joel Petersen, who plays bass and guitar in The Faint, via phone from a Los Angeles skate park during a break before a show. To me, that started to serve as a metaphor of our writing process and what became the album, and our skewed interpretation of technology and trying to control it, but at the same time not being able to.
And though Petersen attributes much of the albums musicality to incidental glitches made into happy accidents, the negative connotations of the groups relationship to technology and its pervasive influence emerge in Fasciinatiions lyrics. The Geeks Were Right depicts a nightmarish future of chemical wars, plastic islands at sea, and boys with software brains. Fink sings, Watch what the humans ruin/ with machines. Machine in the Ghost asserts no ghost running the machine and no holy purpose or larger reason for human existence, and lumps Buddhists, scientists and black magicians together as an ineffectual group that tries but fails to explain the universes mysteries.
I think all of the lyrical content on every album weve done has been a direct reflection of whats going on in our collective lives, said Peterson. In the past, theyve been about relationships that were going on at the time or a broader sort of socio-economic standpoint. And I think its just sort of the natural progression to eventually get out of the smaller pockets of whats directly surrounding you and start looking out at the bigger picture, at non-religious spirituality, and the future and what is the point of all this.
And though themes of violence, death and dystopia are familiar, and the tools (synths, guitars, drums, electronic beats and vocoder) are the same, the record in some ways comes off as a softer, gentler version of The Faint. The rough edges and throbbing beats have been toned down, the static lowered to a quieter buzz, and the guitars more melodic than ever. When left solely to its own devices, The Faints singular vision appears to be a lighter, more pop-influenced project than in years past.
This time around, The Faint chose to take a different tack on the DIY aestheticinstead of something small scale like hand printing record covers in a friends basement, the band has amassed enough capital in its 10 years of existence to buy a building and start a record label. The five transformed a new Omaha space, called Enamel, into a home base with a recording studio, space to shoot and edit video, an art department and a rehearsal space.
Weve always been the type of band to try to bite off more than we can chew, Petersen said. We thought, We know exactly what we want to do. Why we would we bring someone else on with other opinions and who may not get it? And even further than that, we know how we want our record to be out into the public, and why not just form our own label too?
Granted, it took everything they had to realize this dream; but according to the band, the rewards far outweigh the risks. Called Blank.Wav (a nod to The Faints 1999 record Blank Wave Arcade), the bands new label is, for the moment, primarily a vehicle for its own recordings, allowing the group to give Fasciinatiion its full due.
We wanted something broader than just 10 songs on a record . Why should we give it to another label to work on for two months and then forget about? Weve spent 17 years working on this band, Petersen said. Weve all basically devoted our lives to this project and it just seems natural to want do that, to not spend four years making a record, and then just in one day hand it over to a record label and give up ownership of it.
And with the ability to devote all of their energy to their music, Petersen hopes The Faints reach into the worlds of both indie rock and electronica will continue to grow, bolstered by several remixes scheduled to follow the release of Fasciinatiion. First up is a 12-inch record of The Geeks Were Right remixes from fans of The Faint, Boys Noize and Shadow Dancer.
Ive loved The Faint since I bought the Agenda Suicide single back in 2003 and Wet from Birth was definitely among my top albums of 2004. That was a period when I was becoming increasingly bored of dance music, and bands that were attempting a dance-rock fusion were mostly awful as the electronic elements sounded like an afterthought, said Paul Farrier, one half of the electronic duo Shadow Dancer, whose remix of The Geeks Were Right will be released later this month. The Faint, along with LCD Soundsystem, !!! and OutHud, were rock bands that understood the dynamics of club music, so it was genuinely exciting. And with this release, and those on the horizon, it still is.
August 18, Terminal 5, 610 W. 56th St. (betw. 11th and 12th Aves.), 212-260-4700; 8, $25