Mark Fell & Rian Treanor - Last exit to Chickenley

"As far as we can tell this is the first full length collaboration between Mark Fell and his son Rian Treanor, a sprawling, incredibly detailed 90 minute opus that sits somewhere between pastoral/environmental music and plasmic Musique Concrète, recorded in and around their garden in Rotherham, South Yorkshire over the summer last year. We’ve listened to it countless times and still can’t fully get our head round it, we think its one of the most ambitious and intricate renditions of Quiet music you’ll likely ever hear - a huge recommendation if you're into Jakob Ullmann, Arthur Lipsett, Lambkin, Parmegiani, Rashad Becker, Marginal Consort and of course Fell & Treanor’s own work - one to immerse yrself in with zero distractions.

Fractal not fractional, these recordings weave Fell & Treanor’s signature palettes in previously unheard, unpredictable ways; incorporating their interests in the expressive intricacies of Indian Raga music with an inherent sense of Japanese wabi-sabi and a patina of location recordings, to realise a blossoming, allegorical sort of sound bath or sonic garden. The presence of Mark’s parents meant they steered clear of “dance” music or anything that attacked, tempering the sound to an ultra subtle flux of feathered, polymetric percussion, trickling keys, and glowing electronic tones sensitive to their shared family space. Its effect would gently lull Rian’s gran to sleep, and likewise exerts the same influence on us; convecting a zen-like balminess that aligns the chakras and is a genuine wonder to experience.

Time and place melt into an inception-like routine alien to normality, ultimately resembling the patterns of non-linear, cyclic time consciousness Mark had been reading about, and his music with Rian follows this logic; folding in and out of itself with a surreal quality. What start out as sections of location recorded snapshots - people milling in the background, a wind chime, gentle breeze, birds chirping - get slowly augmented by washes of electrostatic, filigree electronics, pulsing subs and sudden percussive bursts, enveloping your ears to transport you to unknown dimensions; somewhere between that Rotherham garden and the furthest reaches of your imagination. For a 90 minute piece of expressionism, what stands out about ‘Last exit to Chickenley’ is how remarkably architectural it is; detailed in every nook, resolved from every angle.

We’ll leave the backstory for you to read in the included liner notes, but in the meantime we urge you to give up a couple of hours of your time to fully immerse yourself in this singular, remarkable album."

https://boomkat.com/products/last-exit-to-chickenley

Patina

Hell yeah

Mind blown. Did not know they were father and son!

90 minutes of straight bangers

NICE

poor kid

Is he actually his son? Holy shit.

  On 3/18/2021 at 10:36 PM, xox said:

poor kid

i'm picturing Rian Treanor being like a young Tiger Woods, except instead of having to hit golf balls in the back yard all day he's down in the basement making synth patches, and he's not allowed to have dinner until the pads are as lush as that part in "In The Air Tonight" just before before the big drum fill

There are a series of tracks on Fell's UL8 called 'Acid In The Style of Rian Treanor' and I remember at the time wondering who that was and just assuming it was a reference to some obscure 1930s academic or something.

It wasn't until a few years later when Treanor started putting out his own stuff that the penny dropped.

  On 3/18/2021 at 7:11 PM, hello spiral said:

Let's have it right, this would be your reaction if the album was a 12 hour recording of their farts.

  On 4/8/2021 at 11:01 AM, Blir said:

Let's have it right, this would be your reaction if the album was a 12 hour recording of their farts.

well, ya know. Gotta take a leaf out of the aphex enthusiast’s book at some point. 

  On 4/8/2021 at 8:13 PM, hello spiral said:

well, ya know. Gotta take a leaf out of the [insert WATMM subforum artist] enthusiast’s book at some point. 

fixt

I demand a subforum for Mark Fell & Rian Treanor, the first IDM dynasty

I'll listen but... idk, Rian's failed to reach even close to his father's heights for my tastes and that recent article in The Wire of the two of them saying written scores were the worst thing to ever happen to music...

  On 4/9/2021 at 3:44 AM, splesh said:

two of them saying written scores were the worst thing to ever happen to music...

and why is that?

  On 4/9/2021 at 3:53 AM, xox said:

and why is that?

I don't remember a lot of it, they made at least one decent point but then hyperbolized. And Rian just seems to just echo his dad on whatever he says and not say much else lol

I am of the opinion they (or maybe just Fell) were totally trolling tbh.

The bit where Fell said something like 'it's like writing down all the moves of a chess game and then people watching two people recreate the game' had me lolling.

Also, boy did they rustle some jimmies in the comment section.

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/interviews/the-musical-score-is-the-worst-thing-that-ever-happened-in-the-history-of-music-mark-fell-

Here's the short article in question (thanks for mentioning). He criticizes a method of composing that is alien to him based on the work which he nevertheless loves, so i don't think he's trolling, just leaves a space for non-dogmatic thinking on both sides.

It seems to me a continuation of earlier Fell's essay, where he describes two ways of doing music: knowing exactly what you want to do and the opposite situation, his preferred one

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/collateral-damage-mark-fell

Yeah that article made me cringe. I met mark fell once. He was friendly and aloof at the same time. Would recommend.

Mark fell has a book coming out btw, preordered already

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/structure-and-synthesis

https://boomkat.com/products/last-exit-09e0d2c5-51fd-4b5b-be9b-3aca6aae2536

Double LP available now.