If choosing only two words to describe Unwire Rewire Rewire, fascination and intrigue would jump to the fore though there are so many more we could offer after exploring the new album from experimental project Fritch. The first of the two was a perpetual captivation across the seven track offering and the latter a just as perpetual question as what would spark the first next, even as the album’s final breath passed and thoughts to future encounters rose in anticipation.
Whether we can truly represent Unwire Rewire Rewire in words here is doubtful. The record is recommended for fans of artists such as Scott Walker, Swans, Adam Ant, Low, and David Bowie, or maybe an amalgam of the quintet and though we can understand the hints it is an adventure of sound and imagination which stands alone in a corner of invention equally as individual. There are moments within its body that enthral, moments that confuse and plenty to spark lustful curiosity and just as enthused contemplation. It is a record which will make you pay attention and share your own sure and unsure thoughts whether within or with others but as it soon proved, rich captivation and pleasure keenly rewards in that arousing conflict of reaction and emotion.
The project of songwriter/musician Will Wilkinson, Fritch had previously stirred attention and keen praise through singles and EPs but it is easy to suggest that Unwire Rewire Rewire will earn richer rewards. From the moment opener We Lose Our Cool released the emotive air in its lungs, the song drew thick curiosity; piano keys and the swathes of vocal sighs a potent coaxing. Fritch’s music is a varied mix of flavours and genres upon that singer songwriter experimentation and swiftly the track revealed its sixties pop inclinations within an atmospherically woven and cinematically cast ballad. It is like a soundtrack to an intimate piece of film, a vision into inner turbulence and emotional anxiety yet from a heart mercurial in its doubts and peace.
To be honest Unwire Rewire Rewire is a collection of tracks which invite one’s own interpretation, even demands it but that is the beauty of the release and composing, it sparks one’s own imagination whilst embracing the provocative sounds and evocative textures it shares. So Long Sunday epitomises the craft and temptation it bears, the second track darkly lit atmospherically and emotionally yet gripping ears with a post punk meets experimental pop catchiness. It is rapturous in its own uniqueness, its breath dreamy but esurient in eager eruptions as classically hued keys align in contemplation. Absorbing and aberrantly infectious, the drama webbed track makes way for the just as tantalising and in many ways portentous exploits of Do You See What I See. It is a track with celestial radiance and sinister inclinations, a piece of suggestion that feels like it revels in the smallness of our being in the great cosmos but equally embraces the magnificence of that minor part; but again just our interpretation of its exploration.
As well as the music, vocally Fritch enthrals; every breath and note shared emotionally fuelled but with an edge of dare we say manic almost schizophrenic insecurity which only adds to the intrigue and enjoyment as proven by next up As Starlings Do. The song also epitomises the draw of the organic beauty of the album, a lure which at times can be a strikingly clamorous affair even in disquieting calm as cast here within a piece of invention which plays like a home movie upon the senses yet with an industrial trespass that blurs the lines between the safety of inner peace and external disruption. It is a track which feels an echo of the past months in lockdown in some ways but an emotional tempest that suggests numerous dilemmas.
Building to crescendos of infection loaded energy and freedom soaked chants, the track makes way for our favourite moment within the album, Severance. Rhythmically tribal and sonically anomalous yet hungrily contagious as vocals bring a conspiracy of thought and romance, the track gripped every strain of our appetite, its post punk/gothic rock instincts addiction in the making as we found.
Completed by firstly Another Monday Evening in Space, an increasingly absorbing plaintive serenade of mystery and inner pondering, and lastly the ProjectP remix of Do You See What I See which saw the track re-wrote, rearranged and reshaped to bring fresh curiousness and atypical grandeur to the original’s ruminations, Unwire Rewire Rewire proved an enthralling pleasure.
The album is probably only an encounter for those with a thirst of the irregular, unusual and experimental, though that an appetite fed in explorations which emerge in their distinctly unique and aberrant ways as pop songs to maybe please a far broader landscape of attention. So we suggest consider Fritch and Unwire Rewire Rewire as your next bold investigation.
Unwire Rewire Rewire is out now via Rats On The Run and Other Voices Records; available @ https://fritchmusic.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Fritchmusic
Pete RingMaster 02/12/2021
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Categories: Music
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