Introduction
Artist: Joe Frawley
Title / Release Page: A Week of Fevers
Release Date: 2015 April 01
Genre: Experimental / Classical
License: CC BY-NC-ND
Media: MP3 / OGG / FLAC / CD
Pricing: $7 USD (Name Your Price) / $10 USD (CD)
Label: Self Release / BandCamp
Rating: ★★★★★★★★
Joe Frawley: A Week Of Fevers is a hazy soundscape of mixed voices, songs, television show openings, and other bits and pieces of memories from a different era. Constantly shifted, fragmented and slightly disconcerting sounds skitter across our ears leaving us lost in the familiarity of it all.
Joe Frawley: A Week Of Fevers
It’s pretty obvious by now, Joe Frawley is a master of the audio collage. He has the ability to pick small segments of audio and mix them with precision to get the exact effect he is after. If there were any doubt about his ability, this work should put that to rest, along with any of his other recent works.
But what brings this work into a new realm is the way in which he shapes the world around us, molds it to bring us into the vision that is in his mind. It’s a sometimes harrowing vision, and other times comforting, but always changing world. It’s not a single dimension of experience, it’s multi-dimensional world.
It’s really quite difficult to describe in words what Joe has accomplished with A Week of Fevers. It has all the earmarks of his work: focused, experimental, gorgeous piano performance, a haunting vocal (provided by Michelle Cross on “Nymphlight, for Joseph Cornell”). And yet, it is a work that is far more than the sum of it’s parts. It’s where all of the techniques and technology meet artistry to create an experience that couldn’t be had in any other form.
And I think that is possibly one of the best things that I can say about this work: it is difficult to describe, it is better to experience it.
If I were to level any complaint against this work is that it’s almost all a little too perfect. The haziness is perfect, the collage effects are perfect. What is missing is some more dynamics, and maybe a little bit of an edge.
When I think of the fevers I had when I was a child, there was an element of terror in them, things would get so distorted at times that I didn’t know what they were, or I felt that something completely improbable was going to happen. I remember one time where I had the feeling that I was falling through the air, and I felt that it was never going to stop. That was a terrifying feeling: that I could possibly know what infinity was and not have any control over how my body felt.
It could be that Joe is a little too comfortable in his process and needs to find some way to shake it up to find other dimensions, or to being in other experiences to build in a different perspective.
Conclusion
As always, Joe Frawley has produced an exception work that goes well beyond the parts that were put into. It is a work of artistry that is missing in a lot of the high-technology produced works these days. However, it’s not without shortcomings: it misses some of the dynamics and more extreme tensions that this concept could bring out. Even despite this lack, it is still a work that is highly listenable and worth the experience.
