Arriving end of May
Discreet's Fordamning Arkiv endeavour delves into recent Gothenburg history to collect together the total recorded works of the short lived Fantasy Sex unit helmed by David Eng and Sewer Election's Dan Johansson between 2008 and 2011. Their existence ran concomitantly with that of Utmarken, a venue, record shop and recording space which in itself was some kind of forerunner to what Discreet are doing right now (no coincidence that it's from Utmarken that Arv & Miljo emerged). In effect, Fantasy Sex is a window into the Gothenburg before the one we know now, the soil from which all of these current manifestations germinated. Amongst others, you can hear traces in the stark no-wave expulsions of Neutral and the ambi-industrial smudges and splatters of Incipientium and Oroskallan. But Fantasy Sex was also something different, too, a wildness that feels attitudinally unmoored. There's three songs total here, the first side consisting of an 18 minute suite in three parts that displays some affinity with/infinite horizon of Spencer Clark's Monopoly Child/Fourth World Magazine ventures, and the second two single pieces that oscillate between free-jazz spirited noise and spooked new age neologisms. Short though their discography is, Fantasy Sex shows that Eng and Johansson had settled on no single path, instead preferring to chance down various digressional paths, the journey likely more the point that the destination. What that says for the contemporary fringe music experiments in Gothenburg is important in ways too obvious to require explanation. More importantly, it shows that efforts to bring this music back into the light is worthy endeavour in and of itself, vital transmissions outta lost space and time.
