Fatal Strategies is essentially a classical album (or neo-classical or whatever fancy people call it). I’ll admit to not listening to all that much classical music, mainly because I fear it would sail over my head, or not seem all that relevant, or something equally ignorant. But the “classical” music that Lejsovka & Freund make is different, it’s classical music that my brain seems to cling on to, to wrap itself around in a grey-furrowed hug. That’s not to say Lejsovka & Freund’s music isn’t intellectually/philosophically deep and complex, because it is. As Keith Freund puts it in his blurb:

We’re beyond excited about how it’s all panned out, hopefully others enjoy it as much. There are some different ideas, allusions, philosophies, and jokes in here but there’s really no need to belabor your listening experience with them.

Anyway, the point is that Lejsovka & Freund make classical music that does something to my brain, something I’m hardly able to process, let alone elucidate. For whatever reason, it makes me feel good. Not in a fun, dance-around-my-bedroom kind of way, but in a heartwarming, perspective-giving way. It has all the hallmarks of the genre – strings and piano and no conventional vocals, but it also feels fresh and contemporary.

Their songs have always seemed part organic and part not, subject to rhythms both mystically natural and complexly digital. Tracks are liable to fracture into pixelated shards which float off into the ether, flowing streams of countless 1s and 0s. Opener ‘Return to Emptiness’ is a great example of this. From all manner of noises – clicks and bloops and hums and whirs – comes a beautiful piano line sounding almost like the passing of time. The track stops abruptly before the end, giving way to slow quavering strings, like the unsteady laboured breaths of some strange alien life form. It’s a strong start, and a welcome reassurance that L&J are sticking to what they do best.

‘Municipal Xerox’ coats pianos in a dusting of electrical static so tactile in headphones you can almost crunch it in your molars, continuing with intermittent swells of feedback, the piano picking up to quite a pace, something I subconsciously categorised as a watching-cityscapes-fly-by-a-train-window tempo. ‘Nothing, Just Looking at the Moon’ is another beauty, great breathy pulses preceding yet more lovely piano which sounds somehow contentedly sad (if that’s the right word), a little like the title of the song itself. ‘Debris Fields’ has this weird intro of stuttering electronics, fluttering strings and cantering piano, which descends into a period of hush, like some strange vacuum. This eventually gives way to feedback and drones and a decidedly ominous air, before a trilled set of beeps, like a supercomputer calculating some crucial formula, heralds the return of piano and pretty, elegiac strings. ‘Carry this Object’ is mostly piano-led, but also develops these strange background sounds – rustles and whispers and taps (apparently from You’re Worth It – an ASMR radio show on Berlin Community radio) – eventually clearing to reveal a woman’s voice repeating the cryptic phrase “another rectangle, an open cage”.

‘Downed Predator Souvenirs’ floats on a haze of strings and low droning piano (be sure to check Gabe Schray’s video below!), while ‘Fog in the Ravine’ has a wonderfully suitable title – tendrils of atmosphere creeping in at the start before the entrance of pianos somehow both sombre and sweeping. Closer ‘Hamburgers in the Woods’ has sounds like an errant Geiger counter or holographic raindrops bouncing on the leaves of some strange digital forest. The track (and album) then ends in vocals that seem fit for a lonely monastery or valley-sat, fire-lit campsite, but are actually soprano Megan Elk and her interpretation of the Swenson’s Galley Boy recipe.* Yes really.

Fatal Strategies inspires a multitude of strange, lateral thoughts – a soundtrack that doesn’t need a film. The musical translation of the postmodern ruminations of an over-active, twenty-first century brain. Music unearthed by a post-society people, who’ll turn it up loud and sit in their ruined cities, reclaimed by branches and vines, and wonder and wonder about us.

Fatal Strategies was released on vinyl by Bark & Hiss (US) and MIE Music (UK). You can also download it via the Lejsovka & Freund Bandcamp page.

*I had to look this up. Say hello to Swenson’s Galley Boy.

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The album sees the band, husband and wife duo Keith Freund and Linda Lejsovka, continue their trademark blend of highly detailed, intelligent sound design and intimate pop sensibilities. Lejsovka was pregnant with the couple’s first child during the writing and recording of the album, a situation which undoubtedly had an effect on their creative process and therefore the end result. But this isn’t simply a musical account of pregnancy or early parenthood, as Freund says in the brief interview on the MIE website:

It’s definitely not an album about a baby or becoming parents, I don’t think we know how to or want to fit that into this project, but instead ended up being a portrait of the two of us clinging to each other throughout a tumultuous, difficult, and exciting time of change. Life got rather chaotic and messy and I can’t really tell you ‘this is what the album is trying to do’, and instead probably need to just say ‘this is what happened’.

The chaos and tension that Freund describes is certainly apparent on the record, albeit in short bursts. The opening of ‘The Very End, Again’ is a furore of harsh noise and sputtering feedback, the polar opposite to the warm and hazy ambience of the majority of the album. However there are other, more subtle examples of the blend of nerves and excitement. In ‘Profile of a Woman in Silk Hood’ the mood changes across the song, just as moods and feelings change across challenging times. The song swings between steady beats that bring to mind action, purpose, and ethereal calm, punctuated by fluttering elecronics that act as the musical equivalent of butterflies in the stomach, probing feelings that threaten to derail convictions of comfort.

The whole album can be viewed this way, with the default ambience set somewhere near serenity and other sonic emotions constantly appearing or fading. The result is a near perfect picture of the ephemerality of human emotion, where extreme pain or joy or fear or confusion are stacatto drops in space, a void that is not at all unpleasant. Even in the most emotional of hours the feelings eventually pale and a sense of placid reflection settles. It is this sense, tinged with love and sadness and empathy, that helps us carry on, to be okay.

Some of the lyrical themes on Love At Dusk reminded me strongly of the band’s debut album (The United Colours of Trouble Books), for example on ‘Fake Fern Shadows’ Lejsovka sings:

“I just need, simple things.
Clean socks, warm bed,
An extra comet to destroy this shitty planet”

And on ‘The Very End, Again’, Freund this time:

“I was cleaning up the dishes
my friend was saying something about her needs
Then the sun exploded burning soil and bone and leaving our
souls to drift like dandelion seeds.”

Both of these lines, to me at least, are reminiscent of the opening lines of ‘For All Our Dead Friends’ (from their debut), where Freund rather charmingly describes a post-apocalyptic landscape and lists several potential causes. Again this comes back to the idea transient feelings, where the dramatic event (in this case the apocalyptic event) is followed by something much less urgent, something more manageable. ‘Fake Fern Shadows’ in effect shows life before the event, again something much simpler and kinder. The event becomes a fleeting violence that felt like the end of the world but soon passed.

So overall, if you are already a fan of Trouble Books then you should buy this album, if you have never heard of Trouble Books but are a fan of experimental ambient pop music (think The Microphones or Mount Eerie meet Emeralds) then you should buy this album. If you don’t fall into either of those categories, you should take a long hard look at yourself and/or watch the video below for the piano-led instrumental track, ‘Chiaroscuro’, and see what you think:

The album is set to be released on the 18th of November. If you like what you hear, you can pre-order it via MIE Music here. Be aware that the LP is limited to a run of just 400 copies so act now if you want one. Alternatively, if you live in North America, you can pre-order the album via Bark & Hiss.

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The band say the inspiration for the album came from the minimalism and abstract geometry in the work of visual artists such as Bridget Riley and Julian Stanczak. Although I am no art (or indeed music) critic, I can certainly see (or rather hear) what they’re getting at; the comparison serves as a good description of the feel of the record. The band’s other description of the album is that it’s “not meant to be super conceptual or anything, just a cool album of nighttime grass thoughts”. That works too.

Fellow Europeans can get the album from MIE Music and North Americans from Bark & Hiss Records. Be aware that the LPs have a very limited release so hurry up if you want one!

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