“Utilizing materials from various sonic sources Fisher Turner creates a rich tapestry of emotive neo-classical passages, minimalist Lynchian electronics, introspective ambient and pulsating techno” – 4* MOJO
“… a multifaceted record that incorporates… field recordings alongside synthetic “slivers”, surreptitious strings, snatches of piano, the occasional detuned guitar and the composer’s own voice” – The Quietus
Today, Simon Fisher Turner has released his new album, Instability of The Signal, via Mute.
Listen to the full album HERE.
The new album is accompanied by a playful new video, directed by the artist, dollmaker and filmmaker John Lee Bird, that finds Simon in an uninhibited mood embodying his childhood self, as depicted in the track. John Lee Bird explains, “In brilliant blue pajamas, with a garage full of props, this is what happens when two friends have two hours to lark around.”
Watch the video HERE.
“Toast” follows previous tracks, “Barefeet”, with a video directed by Sebastian Sharples, “Turning Slowly”, with a video directed by the album’s cover star Isao Yamada, “I Can’t Hear Anything”, created by John Lee Bird and “Bless Your Hands (Part 1 and 2)” by Chris Newby.
The composer, musician and Zelig-like artist who has worked and performed in groundbreaking and underground music, film and art scenes since the ‘70s has created a lush, soothing and intimate album, a landmark in his ever-expanding catalog of projects. The 13-track album features Fisher Turner singing for the first time in many years, accompanying compositions built from tiny snippets of sound along with piano, classical strings, a detuned Fender Telecaster and his magpie-like collecting of field recordings.
Instability of The Signal pulls together four strands of Fisher Turner's sonic experimentation: Slivers, Sounds, Strings, and Singing. The 'slivers' are tiny snippets of audio he used as source material for the tracks, all created by Salford Electronics (aka David Padbury), and reworked by Fisher Turner into foundations for entire tracks. The 'sounds' that pepper these tracks are sourced from Fisher Turner's relentless field recording. They include a rhythm created from the sound of a spinning bicycle wheel recorded in Berlin, the percussive sounds of objects on hard floors inspired by his collaboration with artist potter and writer Edmund de Waal, a hand-made mechanical pencil sharpener made by Tilda Swinton's father (recorded while working on a film with Swinton and the Derek Jarman Lab), along with an extended index of guerrilla field recordings and sonic textures. The album's 'strings' are recordings made with The Elysian Collective (who have recently been performing live with Pulp). Fisher Turner's voice is the centerpiece of this album, it is the 'singing' that draws all these sounds together into a complete and distinctive album of songs. "I was making these tracks with Padbury's slivers one day, and then the penny just dropped," he explains. "I just knew I wanted to sing over them: to use my voice again."
His lyrics scramble Burroughs cut-ups sourced from two of Harold Pinter's poems, words from a book on the video work of Czech filmmakers Breda Beban and Hrvoje Horvatic, flashes of memories of riding buses in London and cycling topless in jeans around the city. The intimate, soft vocals feature his own memories, pulled extracts from diaries and other texts, some of which are political and subtly delivered the frustrations he felt at the beginning of the project. These lyrics, he says: "reflect how I feel without standing on a soapbox and screaming."
The album is rooted in the intimate sound space of a small studio, where he recorded with producer Francine Perry. The intimacy is mirrored in the album's artwork, a photo of his regular collaborator and long-time friend, the filmmaker Isao Yamada listening to the album for the first time. Film plays an important part in telling the visual story of the album, with several filmmakers, including the documentary filmmaker Sebastian Sharples (who previously collaborated with Simon Fisher Turner for Lana Lara Lata (Mute, 2005), invited to create short films to accompany tracks from the album.
Like Fisher Turner's long and varied career, Instability of The Signal is an accumulation of experience, effervescent memories, sounds and textures. It contains hidden learnings. It is about how restorative singing of ourselves and to ourselves can be but is also a document of times and places delivered in beautifully impressionistic palettes of sounds and voices. It is also another document of Fisher Turner's remarkable life and unshakeable curiosity about sound. "I'm now a 69-year-old man and by hook or by crook, and some good luck, this album has turned into something which really sounds like me," he reflects. "I'm singing how I feel I truly sound; this time, I'm not hiding anything."
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