Opening with a track of wonked out scale modulations, which in another time would be termed psychedelic, Delicate Noise introduces Filmezza. Then brashly into handclaps, child wonder at butterflys, synth circular brightness and laid back drum patterns. ‘Butterfly envy’, so described, entertains the childs relation with natural beauty to be that of wonder and beauty, while reviewing the interplay as a psych state laced with a seed of perdition. These ideas are continued in Roundlake park with interactions with environments being the order of the day, lush waterscapes and ambient park recordings hang on strings and drum patterns.
Mark Andrushko makes much of the ‘warmth’ of vintage synths, and plays the psych edge up, with a hint of menace, at the edge. A kind of tripped out Hitchcock of electronica presenting darkly bright melodies, even in ‘Pheremone’ an echo of children’s rhymes undercut the nostalgia with hushed scattered murmurs of a child’s sinister collusion. Yet I listen to the construction of the sinister.
Also there are just genuinely interesting experiments, ‘Deluxer’, contains resonant chimes and staccato typewriter beats. Akin to telephone static and interrupts, sampled and tooled up into shapely slaps in the face, deftly changing pace to undermine your expectations.
It is only the loose weave of sample and instrument that arrests development in this album. Often it sounds as if Andrushko plays to and around the samples. ‘Beware of digital children’, the albums highpoint of the child’s voice, as ambivalent wonder/sinister, has moments of presenting itself as a gimmick. This works against the sophistication of the construction even though it continues an underlying theme of the album. This quibble aside Filemezza is definitely a fine ambient electronica album with the residue of Boards of Canada listening dripping from it and steeped with psyched out glitch laden atmosphere.
Innerversitysound
*
