Фнтз Зппарапд* – The Very Air Seems Replete With Humming And Buzzing Melodies

Sadly, this terrific and outstanding ambient/glitch album goes very much unnoticed and underrated even by enthusiasts of this genre and type of music. Not at all his debut musical work, this album is nevertheless a first official CD by russian artist Vlad Dobrovolski. "The very air..." combines dreamy and captivating ambient sounds and washed-out melodies, mostly abstract and formless, diffusing in various glitches, pops and melodic noises, and resulting in a bright and lucid musical experience. Undoubtely, you can compare this album with some of best productions by such highly-acclaimed artists, as Fennesz, Oval, and many other folks from Mego and Touch roster, etc, and Fitz Ellarald stands such comparison firmly. This is not merely a "copycat" work of an admirer of aforementioned musicians, rather it is a very unique exploration of somehow similar landscape (or should I say, "soundscape").

"The very air" opens with a beautiful and glitchy "Hjarta" (which you would definitely compare with Fennesz),and later on develops further into abstract and dreamy ambient-pop, with some squeaky soviet synthesizers ("Kertenkel"), spooky cinematic atmospheres ("Shitataru"), and even mutilated, slow, electric pseudo-jazz ("Kaufhaus"). Some tracks, like "Ruminant", would remind you of less noisy and more naive lullabies, a-la Raymond Scott dissolved in low-fidelity acoustic tape hiss, and epic composition "Omelia" precedes all those witch-house modern productions by how many years?

Speaking about technical side, Vlad used old soviet synths (Altair, Polyvox, Faemi, etc), some cheap wooden guitar and bass, broken mics to pick up all those signals and vintage Sony TC-KE600S cassette desk to capture all those sounds, and not because of a lo-fi hype, but for a simpler reason: at this time, Vlad's cheap computer weren't capable of recording and playing sounds simultaneously.

Anyway, this album is highly recommended, and of course, you woudln't regret purchasing it on CD, because packaging and design is of very high standard. If you're interested in Fitz Ellarald music, you may investigate some of his freely available download works, released by such Russian net-labels as Tru Type Sounds (Derski) and top-40.org (Las Kalugas, Piam) - the same amazing quality, a whole different musical story.