Avant pop collective FITH to release extended EP on Outer Reaches

Music

FITH, a collective comprised of poets and musicians based across Paris, Manchester & Berlin, are to release an extended EP titled Swamp on the Ransom Note affiliated label Outer Reaches on the 7th of June.

Recorded in the caretakers wing of a 17th century castle in Normandy and mixed by Alexander Paulick Thiel (of Kriedler) the release is an extended play made up of five tracks described by the label as a strain of ‘haunting, oneiric & macabre psychedelia’ that features ‘spoken word, dub FX, processed percussion and concrète electronics’

Starting out as a duo based in Berlin FITH have since become a revolving collective with a membership that currently includes Dice Miller, Enir Da, Rachel Margetts, ChrIs Lmx, & Arnaud Mathé. Previous projects have included a full length 12″ on their own imprint Wanda Portal as well as solo collections of poetry, a two track split and a reinterpration of the soundtrack to the cult 1971 film Wanda directed by Barbara Loden. FITH members and affiliates also hold down an occassional slot on NTS Manchester exploring the inspirations for both the collective and the Wanda Portal imprint.

In discussing the making of Swamp the collective cites Franz Kafka, Dario Argento, Lucrecia Martel’s La Ciénaga (The Swamp – the film the record is named after) and Yiddish ghost theatre as figures, works and forms that were promimently drawn upon, whilst Margetts and Miller reveal a record that came together under the influence of the historic location in which it was made:

‘The record was mostly recorded in a caretaker’s wing of a 17th century castle in Normandy. It was early March 2018, and our first encounter with the Spring. We had no idea how everything would unfold. There was a lot of tension. Some of us felt compelled to get outthe attic room where we had set up our makeshift recording studio and just walk and walk down the vast flat meadows and explore the relics of the wartime barracks, others wanted to keep recording. The outside was serene and inviting, and even though we had been cooped up indoorsrecording for long stretches of time, we could see from the corner of our eyes, the branches of the trees quivering; an impersonal energy blew through us and then things just happened.’

Stream ‘Forest’ below.

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