FOQL & Fischerle – Personal Wastelands

Cassette

Personal Wastelands is an album rooted in contradiction. Although FOQL and Fischerle are both based in Poland, these two artists—who are working together here for the first time—come from distinctly different backgrounds. FOQL, a former member of the groundbreaking Oramics collective who’s currently a part of SHAPE’s 2020 artist roster, usually operates in the margins between IDM and industrial, while Fischerle, a sonic nomad who heads up the Pawlacz Perski label, is someone whose detailed creations routinely bust through established notions of genre.

Forged over the course of a few sessions in FOQL’s Warsaw studio, the album began with improvisation, as the two artists—armed only with two identical drum machines—gradually discovered some remarkably potent common ground, a nebulous "wasteland" of bleak atmospheres, hypnotic dub and corroded rhythms. There’s a bleakness to the music, yet the album's percolating percussion and robust basslines—which nod toward the more experimental end of the UK hardcore continuum—are downright lively, even when they've been slathered in sludgy reverb. Like many releases on Paralaxe Editions, Personal Wasteland defies easy categorization, but despite its many contradictions, it's a compelling document of what can happen when two exploratory talents join forces and simply let their creativity run free.