Cassette - landing soon
Richard Chartier’s LA-based minimalist label Line issued ‘Ten Types of Elsewhere’ in late 2004, hailing the first significant body of Mark Fell’s work beyond his string of aces as one half of SND, and a decade of credits spanning everyone from rave crew DiY Discs to Mille Plateaux’s classic Clicks & Cuts series. Comprising 45 parts in 10 sections, Fell’s first album would most firmly outline his systematic, process-oriented studio practice as derived from attempts to document his installation work, with results that captivatingly collapse his world of extra-musical influences - aspects of structuralist film thru to advanced maths, philosophy and sociopolitical/cultural critique - into forms of concrète electronics defined by a perceptive curiosity for possible spaces and spatial objects. We’re probably preaching to the choir here, but Mark’s recent Tone Glow interview is the ideal place to get a horse’s mouth grip on all the above, including ‘Ten Types of Elsewhere’, which he admits was made while still relatively “unfamiliar with traditions outside of what I’d grown up with. That whole vocabulary of music with silence, or spaces...”. What unfolds provides an early glimpse at kernels of his work for the next 20 years, from the stop/start pings of his ‘Topology’ parts to the calligraphic scrabble of ‘incompleteness’ bits thru shearing ‘abjections’, rhythmic urgency and resonant lushness of ‘storage’, passages of pitch-bent strings and even disarmingly cute digital both of his ‘remote systems’ section and ultimately the floating structure of ‘commuting (3).’It holds its own among the early C.21st’s daring investigations of form and function, warping and dissecting conventions with a balance of the drily technical and wryly ludic that’s come to define much of his subsequent, inspirational catalogue, now reaching to a bewildering spectra of mutant dance music and fractious, innovative duos (with Pat Thomas, Okkyung Lee, Limpe Fuchs, Rian Treanor , et al), and various ensembles. But for the rhythmically curious and big eared listeners who can join dots across mediums, ‘Ten Types Of Elsewhere’ should be considered crucial listening, no less.
