FLY PAN AM

1. "Avant-gardez Vous" (1:19) electrostatic weirdness. (3/5)

2. "Distance Dealer" (4:10) What if MY BLOODY VALENTINE and STEREOLAB had merged around Y2K? This might be what you'd get. AWESOME! There's definitely a little debt owed to Mark Hollis on this one, as well. A top three song. (9.5/10)

3. "Bleeding Decay" (5:37) a modern day HOLGER CZUKAY opening, only the pulsing bass and kick drum lines serve notice to a house-dance intention. 90 seconds in the music congeals into some kind of blend of early U2, Art of Noise and KITCHENS OF DISTINCTION as heavily effected vocals sing. At 3:30 a spooky immature screeching voice breaks in, turns into a kind of horn-muzzled chant before screaming once more before the guitars unleash some high octave chord tremolo strumming. Nobody's doing music like this today as far as I know. (8.75/10)

4. "Dizzy Delusions" (1:51) gorgeous seascapes provided by heavily effected guitar. Adrian Belew and Kevin Shields would be proud! (or, at least, they should be.) (5/5)

5. "Each Ether (5:07) breaks into the race straight out of the blocks with lots of fast-pounding drum kit, machine gun bass lines, and layers of guitar and electronic sheaths. The screaming Mimi of "Bleeding Decay" returns after the 1:30 mark. 30 seconds later we're caught in some kind of David Sylvian-Robert Fripp-Brian Eno time warp as all instrumentalists repeat over and over their little four-beat riff for over a minute. Around the four minute mark a more "normal" ghost voice sings--and is backed! Quite lovely! Sounds a bit like MEW and TAME IMPALA. (9.25/10)

6. "Alienage Syntropy (1:59) industrial noises from the percussion and electronics while drums play along with intermittent syncopated cymbals and snare rudiments. Kind of cool in a "The Waiting Room" kind of way. (4/5)

7. "One Hit Wonder" (6:57) weirdly hypnotic combo of electrostatica with groovy bass and disco/house drum beat (creating an awesome Kevin Moore/CHROMA KEY/NO-MAN/ANATHEMA kind of feel) until the half way point at which time a strange human voice begins to "screowl" over the music in a voice that sounds like a scratchy-throated cat from OOIOO who is probably being strangulated. The music is so awesome that it makes the weird vocal seem like an anomaly and, therefore, tolerable, even amusing. A top three song for me. (14/15)

8. "Discreet Channeling" (6:26) OPUS III sounds, MY BLOODY VALENTINE guitars, COLIN EDWIN bass, militaristic drums, CYNIC or DEATH's death metal growls (in female form), TOBY DRIVER's emotional intelligence, PETER GABRIEL creative production genius. The band really amps it up a couple notches for the final two minutes. Awesome track! I'd go to a disco just to dance to this one! (9/10)

9. "Interface Your Shattered Dreams" (5:37) opens as a KTICHENSCOCTEAUSLOWSTEREODIVELABLUSHTWINSOF DISTINCTION song with a COWBOY JUNKIES BRIAN FERRY singing lead vocals...until the death metal screams at the one minute mark force everything to fall apart into a cacophonous section of sound being sucked into a black hole, riding through the eye of the needle (the Taint), and then coming back out the other end reformed, reversed, rewinded, and reborn. With more shoegaze! Wow! Brilliant! Extraordinary! Definitely a piece of prog rock genius--on par with something from prog chameleons ULVER--and my final top three song from the album. (9.5/10)

Total Time: 39:08

Five stars; a minor masterpiece of refreshing electro-retro-shoegaze prog rock.

Fly Pan Am was formed in order for Roger to explore livelier music in experimental post rock sounds. Since their formation, they have collaborated with various other artists and have added electronic experimentation into their sound. The line-up has remained the same through the years, though the band did go on hiatus from 2005 to 2018. The quartet consists of Roger (vocals, guitars, electronics) along with Jonathan Parant (vocals, guitar computer), Jen Sebastien Truchy (bass, electronics, synthesizer, mellotron, computer), and Felix Morel (drums). The band reunited and played for the first time 14 years in 2018, and then released their first album since the hiatus in September of 2019 called "C'est ça" which consists of nine tracks and has a total duration of about 40 minutes.

"Avant-gardez vous" (1:19) starts things off with a noisy, introductory piece that uses electronically enhanced instrumentals in a noisy layered track. "Distance Dealer" (4:09) brings in a more traditional sound, at first anyway, with a upbeat sound and clean sound. Noises soon come in to surround the traditional sound along with subdued vocals. This all creates a unique, noisy yet lush and somewhat lounge-jazz sound, but there is nothing typical about the entire mix, its original, strange and cool. There is a heavy use of both traditional instrumentation and electronics that might make one think of "65daysofstatic", however, this is still much different than that, making it a type of post/math rock that you haven't heard anything like. "Bleeding Decay" (5:36) begins with layered effects and noise which soon gets a more organized sound when synths and drums come in. The beat is more moderate here, and there is a strange vocalized effect along with a nice echoing guitar melody that appears through the hazy layers. The electronic effects that manipulate instrumental sounds gives it a industrial sound that supplement the traditional playing of the instruments. Sudden screaming vocals come in at 3 minutes, which is a bit of a surprise, but only last about a minute as the music becomes tenser with repeated bass and ticking drums. Then it takes the melody and transforms it into a metallic sound. Again, there is nothing like this out there.

"Dizzy Delusions" (1:50) is short, but it has some really neat effects that really mess around with your senses. In it's short duration, it travels through lushness to outbursts of dark noise. "Each Ether" (5:06) begins right away with hazy, shoegaze style vocals on top of a buzzsaw guitar enhanced by electronic manipulation while maintaining an upbeat rhythm. As it continues, there is some screaming going on deep in the mix while the music plays a hazy, yet rhythmic sound, thick and layered, yet not at all like a drone. As the title suggests, it is "off in the ether", yet it is strangely listenable. I would say the music takes some familiar sub-genres of music and makes them new and different, even giving an avant-garde approach to the music.

"Alienage Syntropy" (1:59) is another short noise composition, again manipulating sounds in interesting ways to create unique soundscapes. Through this one, the drums attempt to make some kind of sense out of these metallic drones and noises, and end up getting manipulated while they are at it. "One Hit Wonder" (6:57) starts with pulsating synth sounds while rolling and ticking cymbals create waves of sound urging the pulsating music to ebb and flow along like waves. This all increases in sound as layers come in building on the drone which continues to pulsate, but at a slower pace, and spacey effects start to surround it all. That surprising screaming comes in again, while the electronic effects go a bit crazy, things really start to get chaotic and noisy. Then a bass pattern starts to organize the chaos a bit, things take a sudden short pause, and then it all returns as a chaotic noise fest again. Things go from lush layers to heavy noise, alternating back and forth until the noisy ending.

"Discreet Channeling" (6:25) begins with the shoegaze sound again, with layered droning and soft, yet rapid drum patterns. The deep, whispering, yet evil sounding vocals are electronically enhanced and kept deep in the manipulated layers. The drums start to drive the music as it gets really fuzzy, for a while, then it returns to the original sound again with the whispered, subdued vocals. Just before the 3rd minute, it sounds like a manipulated children's chorus is singing deep in the layers, then the dark, muddy sounds begin again, the drums beat a strange march as feet slog through the mire. The music takes a sudden turn as the guitar starts to sound like a bagpipe and heavy, thick layers play something that might just resemble a riff, while the screaming continues, this time barely discernable.

"Interface Your Shattered Dreams" (5:37) sounds more like a goth experiment with deep, dark vocals buried under a shoegaze style guitar and fast rolling drums. The "chorus" becomes a bit melodic in the instruments, yet there is that screaming vocal buried in the layers again. This stops to be replaced by slow heavy drum and bass beats while sound effects give one an illusion of a monster rising from the deep. Then there is a long pause. Then the ominous drum and bass bring back in more eerie effects. At this point the track is quite scary sounding, but then it is suddenly replaced by the goth-shoegaze layers again. The so called "chorus" returns with more screaming buring under the layers, then the goth-style comes back. All of this creates something very new, unusual and unpredictable, just like this entire album.

This album is so unlike anything else, taking familiar, current styles and manipulating them, experimenting with their structure and sound, and stretching them beyond their boundaries. What you get as a result is a hazy, lush, noisy, dark, chaotic and yet sublime mix of sounds that create something very unique. The band has always been one to experiment with music, but they remained somewhat loyal to their roots. Now, they take those sounds to the next layer, creating post rock that is highly experimental and move it into one of the most logical places it could possilbe go, into avant-garde territory, until it hardly even sounds like anything else out there. This is very daring music, definitely not accessible, but there are passages where they fool you into thinking it might be, only to destroy any preconceptions you might have. Be warned, this music can get quite loud and noisy as sounds clash with one another, yet there are segments of sublime sounds that will take you in other directions completely. I know there are a lot of people that may not like this music, but I think it is genius. The band really hits on some great sound on this album, and it is well produced. It definitely makes the list as one of the best albums of the year, especially in its own classification as post/math rock. 5 stars.

Post Rock has never been my favorite genre of music, even though I do enjoy an occasional album from the genre every now and again. While I am certainly no expert of the genre, it seems to me that far too many of the bands that play post rock are very clichéd and lacking in innovation. Fly Pan Am's 1999 self-titled debut album proves just that, through a monotonous, uninspired, and repetitive experience.

If you're a fan of post rock, you may find more enjoyment from this album then I do, so I will day that from the start. This album has Roger Tellier-Craig of Godspeed You! Black Emperor on guitar, so if you consider yourself to be a fan of his you might want to check this out. For the casual post rock listener, such as myself, I really can't recommend this album to you at all. I have a really hard time sitting through all 60 minutes of this album. Especially when you put into consideration that you could easily cut off 25 minutes of useless repetition from this album. All in all, I get really frustrated when I listen to this album! There are some good ideas, but muddy production qualities and painfully boring compositions really destroy my overall listening experience.

This one hour album consists of only five songs, which range from a comfortable nine and a half minutes, all the way to almost eighteen minutes! Almost all of these songs could have easily been trimmed down in terms of length, and that is my biggest complaint with Fly Pan Am. Especially the near 18-minute track. The entire song is essentially based on two notes, which can obviously get repetitive after a short amount of time. And then when you add annoying, headache-inducing sound effects on top of that, it makes for a really bad way to spend such a vast amount of time. Unfortunately, none of the other four tracks are any more interesting.

As if the boring compositions weren't bad enough, the production qualities are really poor as well. It sounds very low budget, and the lead electric guitar sounds can occasionally get very annoying. The production is a minor complaint in the big picture, however. This album has far larger flaws than some mixing issues.

The musicianship is pretty poor as well. A lot of the playing comes across as sloppy and uninspired. The bass playing of J.S. Truchy is nearly inaudible, so I can't comment on him too much. The guitar playing is especially sloppy, and could have been much better. The drumming from Felix Morel is pretty boring, to be completely honest. He does absolutely nothing notable through the entire coarse of this album.

Conclusion:

Fly Pan Am is a really poor debut from this band, and I'm afraid I can't even recommend this to any post rock fans unless you're a die-hard Godspeed You! Black Emperor collector. I don't give out 1 star ratings often, but I'm afraid that is what I must give this album. I've only listened to this album from beginning to end a handful of times, and I'm afraid I won't ever hear it again.

1 star.

Of course, the members of Godspeed never made any seriously audacious moves since their initial audacious move of starting the band in the first place. All of their albums were significantly different without comprimising their identity. It was the band's offshoots that really pushed the limits.

A Silver Mt. Zion started off with a similar sound to Godspeed, they quickly evolved into a highly innovated group that constantly tries new things out without getting too indulgent. It seems that there was a finite supply of indulgence, and Fly Pan Am wanted all of it.

This is a bold project. It's bold because they wrote a two-note line and repeated it for 18 minutes! I'm fine with minimalism, but this is approaching the limit of minimalism. And as that limit is approached, the result is either boring or intolerable. This is both. I like the material, but it is way too repetitive, and even with some sound in the background, not enough is changing. So it starts out with enjoyment but then it hits either boredom or annoyance and then it just oscillates between the two.

The ideas are solid, but they are self-sustaining for as long as they are being used. However, you will notice an avant-garde mindset about this record, and eventually they will almost succeed in mixing avant-garde stylings with post-rock.

The most immediately apparent difference here is the instrumentation, which is similar to Explosions in the Sky – guitar, bass, drums, and a bit of edited-tape trickery. No strings, which seems like almost a prerequisite for this type of music. The guitars remind me quite a bit of Explosions at times, although the arrangements are more monotonous, and Pan Am spend quite a bit of time just playing unvaried (or only slightly varied) passages during their interminably long compositions. The shortest work here is almost ten minutes, and the completely insufferable “Dans ses Cheveux Soixante Circuits” drags on for almost eighteen minutes, almost all of which consists solely of a two-note sequence repeated over and over and over and over…. You get the idea. I think this may have been done via tape mixes, not sure, but I totally failed to get the point and had to check my player several times during the first few listens just to make sure it was operating correctly.

The opening track “L'espace Au Sol Est Redessiné Par D'immenses Panneaux Bleus” is a bit more interesting, and shows a fair amount of Godspeed influence in the simple few bars that slowly build and morph slightly into what sounds exactly like so many of Menuck’s early compositions. The track runs a bit long at thirteen minutes, with not much point to the last several minutes, but this is pretty decent moody experimental rock, which is of course what it’s supposed to be.

“Et Aussi L'éclairage De Plastique Au Centre De Tout Ces Compartiments Latéraux” has some interesting and oddly-formed guitar notes that I’m not quite sure how they were formed, but the taped special effects lose their impact after several minutes of seemingly pointless repetition.

The first half of “Bibi à Nice, 1921” is almost indiscernible unless you crank your speakers all the way up. I’m not sure if this was intentional but if it was, the effect falls pretty flat. The second half has some decent guitar work/feedback, but not that much different than that on the opening track.

The final track “Nice Est En Feu!” has a decent brooding tempo and some slightly creepy female backing voices that alternate between wordless crooning and humming, plus a little piano. But just as this one finally seems to be going somewhere, it abruptly ends.

I probably did expect too much from these guys considering their pedigree and the Constellation label they were released on. But I suspect others would expect as much as me if they pick this up based on their previous experiences with Godspeed and Silver Mt Zion. They will probably be a bit disappointed just like I was.

Good for completionists or for people who like to wear black and mope around coffee shops bemoaning their presence in the human race, but not worth the money for anyone else. Two stars.

peace

As with many artist on this label , these guys are from Quebec , but they vary quite a bit from GYBE!, Do Make Say Think , Silver Mt Zion etc.. Their music still has some moments that I would classify as typically Constellation sound , but they do stray from the path often and generally head off in a direction that I will best describe as unexpectedly experimental playing the studio as an instrument a bit the same way a Techno Dj or lete 80's rap artist might play the turntables. Do not let these two example scare youoff ,we are not at all in such a category of music , but the tape effects (or whatever studio tamperings these guys do) are disturbing meto thepouintof making the listening experience of one of their record (I had heard another a few years ago ( Ithink it was the debut) rather difficult and unpleasant. I am quite afraid that most progheads would never come to appreciate this oeuvre , because those tape effects make repeated listening quite arduous. Of late, DMST's latest album seem to head also in this direction.

I wish I could avoid rating an album I do not understand , but I will simply not recommend it unless you are Constellation record completist