Fergus Kelly - Swarm Logic

Fergus Kelly is one of those musicians whose roots are set deep in the post-punk 80’s DIY ethos and samizdat musical education beyond academia and typical routes of experimenting musical artists.

His albums are always some sort of journey of discovery for me. Both self-discovery because Fergus presents an open space for many interpretations and learning experience as well that comes across as a guidebook for anyone who wants to gain some sort of music and artistic self-awareness.

On the other hand – it’s music discovery we are talking about here since there is a lot of novelty in his music and there is always something fresh that you can pick up between left and the right margin of the canvass that Fergus offers.

I didn’t know what to expect of this new album. The previous one struck me with an intricate symphony of instruments and objects that the artist conjured magically in an intimate atmosphere of subtle poly-rhythmic symphony.

‘’Swarm logic’’ is equally elusive but its context has a completely different shade. There is a steady base of bass-drums here. The structure of the tracks seems more close to the psychedelic post-punk genre and it has somewhat jazzy feel to it when it comes to the motoric qualities of it.

Yes, it is more digestible and more towards traditional set up but after 2 tracks you realize that is something of a disguise for the usual instrumentation that Fergus chooses.

The undertones or rather-under-beats of lace-like metal openings and shortcomings make this album a collection of fairly short musical stories that present themselves either melancholic stir fry of dub deep bass and reverberation as well as more linear structure. Still pretty haunting and elusive.

What is the process behind it all? There is an idea that Mr. Kelly uses that follows the stripping and editing the sounds that after all this come together into one chunky structure that doesn’t lose its dynamics at all.

The melodies with beats make an interesting mix on this album which might be easily taken for some psychedelic dub classic. But since it’s such a clean cut experimentalism within a few genres – it doesn’t fit into category – creating its own category and having a nice shape that makes you feel – on the outside it might be even a downtempo feel to it. A lavish relaxation I experienced during the listening sessions made me think that quite often great art and especially-individually understood ‘’sound art’’ doesn’t have to be smoke and mirrors – it can be taken out of its usual idiosyncratic territory into something completely new and fresh.

As it happened here.   

Bandcamp link