Exploring Wider Realities: FITH Interviewed
Earlier this year the Ransom Note affiliated label Outer Reaches – for the record, yours truly – released Swamp, an extended EP of ‘haunting, oneiric & macabre psychedelia’ by the fluid, multi-faceted artist collective FITH. In the months since the release – as we’ve lived with, and become accustomed to, the record – its significance has deepened.
Initially, parallels were drawn with the likes of Conny Plank, Tuxedomoon, Lucrecia Dalt and Coil. Yet a growing familiarity has thrown up a fair share more since then. Influences the collective have previously acknowledged – Dario Argento and Franz Kafka in particular – are present, but the way in which these touchstones, and others, are manifested only becomes perceptible with any great detail, once the record has been given a close and concerted listen. Swamp rewards a bit of investigation.
In a broad sense, the vivid irradiance of Suspiria and the disquiet and foreboding of some lost Kafka short story is certainly brought to mind, however there’s much more to pick through here. Swamp is both evocative and untethered. In other quarters, as if to illustrate the point, comparisons have been made to Angela Conway (AC Marias), Dome, Tolouse Low Trax, Toresch, the Decoder soundtrack, even Daphne Du Maurier. Additionally, Luc Ferrari, Goblin and Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England could probably be added to the equation here too. Yet even if the sum of these analogies feels accurate, there’s still the lingering sense of a record that evades definitive comparability.
Beyond reference points which ultimately only tell half the story, Swamp reveals a connection to an esoteric lineage that encompasses folklore, witchcraft and myth as well as neglected and alternative histories. These practices are combined in a way that suggests an original and protean arrangement. According to Dalia Neis (aka Dice Miller) – the writer, film academic and predominant vocalist in FITH – the record sits in an imagined temporal space, between an ‘ancient utopian past’ and numerous ‘utopian / dystopian futures’, thereby representing an amalgamation of imprints; not only of all these different practices and influences but of different histories and timelines too. A multiplicity that’s constantly shifting and overlapping.
Befitting the notion of time being elastic and collisional and of gothic and haunting qualities, Swamp was brought together in the caretaker’s wing of a 17th century castle in Normandy. According to Rachel Margetts – a solo artist in her own right, under the name Yr Lovely Dead Moon, and another prominent member of the collective – the recording sessions were tinged with an intensity that came close to mania, a state that might be expected, given the pressure, proximity and unfamiliarity of the setting. This environment, of overwhelming scenery and of intensive activity, appears to have had a considerable effect on the outcome.
The result is a work of enigmatic and formidable character that reflects multi-disciplinary interests, open-minded collaboration and expansive aesthetic diversity. It’s a record that feels like the consummation of what the collective’s output has pointed towards, since its respective members met in 2015 and began collaborating in various permutations the following year. Poetry collections, imaginary soundtracks, recordings of live, improvisatory sessions, and several other miscellaneous releases have surfaced in that time, under the banner of their Wanda Portal imprint. Our own first encounter with FITH came courtesy of their first self-titled LP. On tracks like Gist and Speed, there were stirring departures into ruminative, gossamer forms, and on Signs / Cornerstone the collective demonstrated an aptitude for affect and transcendence as much as dread and dislocation.
Ever since, after this material instigated a correspondence with them all, and several months after we initially released Swamp, we still believe FITH represent an endlessly fascinating creative project. And we still – stubbornly and begrudgingly perhaps – believe they’ve made one of the best records we’ve encountered all year.
As expanded upon in this conversation with FITH members Adrien Lamouroux (aka Enir Da), Dalia Neis (aka Dice Miller) and Rachel Margetts, there’s a predictably impressive depth to the conceptions that have informed their common trajectory. On top of that, Lamouroux, Neis and Margetts each originate from different backgrounds and have been shaped by contrasting upbringings and myriad formative experiences.
Early encounters with experimental film for Neis, a feeling of statelessness from a nomadic childhood for Lamouroux and an obligatory exposure to the restless artistry of David Bowie for Margetts, each had some bearing on their own approaches to creativity and their subsequent contributions to FITH. Besides many other factors.
After Lamouroux met Neis for the first time in Berlin, collaborative sessions were proposed, with the ambition to welcome others into the fold and to inaugurate a collective with a wider membership and an unfettered remit. Neis, later enthused by the fulcrum of activity around Salford’s Islington Mill and by her meetings with the likes of Paddy Shine (Gnod) and Michael Holland (of the Ono label), eventually met Margetts and was impressed by a monologue she presented at a Lydia Lunch writing workshop they both attended there. Ideas and projects have flourished between them ever since.
In the following, free flowing conversation we cover all of this and much more in detail, unravelling personal histories and their respective paths into art and music, the roots and foundations of the collective and the origins and stories behind Swamp, their latest and greatest record. Reflecting the multi-disciplinary spirit and exhaustive allusive inclinations of FITH there is a curated selection of images, both of the collective and of influences relevant to them, running throughout.
Also accompanying the interview is the final instalment in a trilogy of videos produced by the filmmaker Tatia Shé, this time for the title track from the record. As with Tatia’s previous videos for l’au-delà and Białystok, there’s an unnerving and mysterious quality to what she presents. On this occasion the impressionistic and cryptic domestic scenes of Shé’s prior visuals are supplanted by a focus on the heightened state and unpredictable movements of one person, in this case, the performer Mala Ray.
Shé cycles through a hallucinatory series of images as Ray rolls and contorts herself as if in a trance, faintly recalling Isabelle Adjani’s performance during the infamous subway scene in Andrzej Żuławski’s film Possession.
Swamp is out now on Outer Reaches and Dalia Neis’ new book Zephyrian Spools, a work which has interesting parallels and congruities with the record, is available to order from Knives, Forks & Spoons Press. More on that in the interview below.
Could you each introduce yourself and trace your beginnings in art and music?
Dalia Neis aka Dice Miller: I’m Dalia (aka Dice Miller). I have had a meandering, circuitous route towards music. As a child I wanted to act and sing but found myself drawn to filmmaking and made experimental films since I was 16 years old. I enjoyed structuring the films and finding ways to express peculiar rhythms and atmospheres. I suppose I have transposed this into music making, in particular with FITH. At the same time writing and reading widely has always been important to me and has fed into writing lyrics to songs and exploring wider realities.
Adrien Lamouroux aka Enir Da: I have been introduced to music at a young age I suppose. I started playing the piano when I was 5 for about 10 years, until I decided I wanted to play something different. As I could not play drums because I always lived in flats, bass naturally came to me as the best option, and I was the only bass player among my friends. I quickly started playing together with people and discovered I was not interested in playing covers, so I started composing a bit.
Rachel Margetts aka Yr Lovely Dead Moon: Haha, when I was 11 or so I got really obsessed with David Bowie after my Dad played me Ziggy Stardust in the car. I guess because of Bowie’s wide musical contexts and collaborations, his work led me into lots of cool stuff, I guess in the end experimental music actually. I was playing guitar as a teenager and clarinet earlier. Later I had some bands and started playing gigs. Also, lots of going out and free parties too had some kind of influence. Writing and reading too, have always been very important to me, as Dalia already said, as a way to explore and expand the world.
How did the FITH collective and, by extension, the Wanda Portal imprint originate?
AL: I met Dice in Berlin. I wanted to make music with her after a night jamming with friends.
I sent her a few tracks a while after, asking if she would be up for adding lyrics. That was the early beginning of FITH.
To be honest we had a vague idea in mind of making music for some kind of comics but we quickly put the idea aside and decided after five tracks to go for another five and make an album.
At that moment we did not know if we wanted to play live, it was not really the idea. Dalia rather suggested we should start a collective, meet people, get inspired from one another, involve people in a process of collaboration rather than focusing on FITH as a project on its own, which gave birth to Wanda Portal.
DN: Wanda emerged out of FITH. It became clear that we all had overlapping projects that we wanted to explore and bring out into the world. At the same time, I was meeting a lot of musicians and artists along the way, particularly during my time living in the Islington Mill in Salford. The Islington Mill was the home to an eclectic group of artists and musicians. It was there that I met Rachel who later joined FITH. She gave this mesmerizing monologue at the Lydia Lunch Workshop. It was there that I also met Michael Holland who ran the Ono label and Paddy Shine from the band Gnod. It was a very active, deeply collaborative and inspiring time. And somehow things took off with Wanda: a collaborative release with Ono; guest radio slots with Andreas Reihse on NTS (Michael Holland and Paddy Shine’s Onotesla show) and other overlaps and collaborations.