Rong Weicknes

This Belgian-American duo Fievel Is Glauque combine knotty, complex jazz stylings with light, seemingly effortless, sunshine-filled bossa- and yé-yé-inspired vocal melodies. Their first album, the mono cassette-recorded God's Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess, appeared in 2021. Recorded live in the studio in one night, Flaming Swords arrived in 2022, and the more ambitious Rong Weicknes followed in 2024. It was recorded live in three versions, including one without a click track, and was then pieced together in the mixing process with expectedly off-balance results.

A multi-instrumentalist who specializes in piano, the Brattleboro, Vermont-raised Zach Phillips met vocalist Ma Clément on a 2018 songwriting trip to Brussels. Mutual friend and pedal steel player Eric Kinny introduced the pair after Phillips mentioned he was looking for a singer. Clément, a trainee nurse who'd also spent time in France and Germany, attended to a head injury sustained by Phillips just prior to their first meeting. They also bonded over musical influences, and Phillips enthused to Clément about White Noise's An Electric Storm, a personally game-changing 1969 record that he found in his parents' basement at the age of 15. They eventually settled on Fievel Is Glauque -- a reference to the creepy appearance of the mouse from Don Bluth's 1986 animated film An American Tail -- as a name for their new project, when it was suggested by the saxophonist, Eléonore Kenis. Both Kinny and Kenis featured in Fievel's first nonet, who made their initial recordings in Brussels in late 2018.

By this point, Phillips was a relative veteran of the Vermont and New York experimental music scenes. Between 2007 and 2017, he ran OSR Tapes, and from 2011, he performed and recorded as Blanche Blanche Blanche alongside Sarah Delaney Smith. He also struck up a friendship with Quentin Moore and subsequently appeared on both Big French records, 2013's Downtown Runnin' and 2017's Stone Fish, after moving to Brooklyn. Prior to the formation of Fievel Is Glauque, he'd been involved in the release, performance, or production of over 100 albums. The title of one of these -- Open Session Rock, a 2012 Blanche Blanche Blanche cassette -- encapsulated Phillips' preference for recording with a rolling cast of players to capture the freshness and immediacy of a new collaboration.

From 2018 to 2020, Phillips and Clément rehearsed, recorded, and performed live with five different ensembles in four different locations -- Brussels, New York, Los Angeles, and Tournefeuille, France -- featuring no fewer than 25 individual jazz players. Reputedly, enough material was recorded in professional studios during this period for five Fievel Is Glauque albums. However, they decided to cherry-pick the best takes captured in rehearsals for the sessions on a mono cassette recorder. These concise, lo-fi recordings were mastered by Ryan Power -- a former bandmate of Phillips who played guitar at the New York session -- and comprised the debut Fievel album, 2021's God's Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess. Also distinguished by its offering of 20 tracks in 35 minutes, it was the inaugural set issued on La Loi, Phillips' self-release imprint, which also put out his solo record Feed a Pigeon, Breed a Rat that same year. In May 2022, a vinyl release of God's Trashmen… on London's Kit Records helped to raise Fievel's profile.

Shortly afterward, La Loi issued an EP, Aérodynes, which uncharacteristically made use of overdubs, leaned occasionally into indie pop, and was more spacious and laid-back in tone than earlier material. Not only did this EP have a limited physical run, but it was also withdrawn from digital services within a month of its release. During September and October 2022, Fievel Is Glauque carried out a prestigious and extensive tour of the U.S. with their kindred spirits, Stereolab. To coincide with these dates, a double A-side was issued featuring "Go Down Softly" and "The River," Fievel's recording of an old Blanche Blanche Blanche track rescued from the Aérodynes EP. Issued through MATH Interactive, November brought their second album, Flaming Swords. It was a dense, well-recorded (live in one night as a septet at La Savonnerie in Brussels), jazz-focused set that bordered on math rock while simultaneously making great use of Kinny's pedal steel.

A rejiggered lineup consisting of Phillips, Clément, and Flaming Swords drummer Gaspard Sicx, along with Thom Gill (guitar), Logan Kane (bass), Daniel Rossi (percussion), André Sacalxot (saxophone, flute), and Chris Weisman (guitar, electric sitar), assembled for October 2024's Rong Weicknes. Recorded at the farm and music studio The Outlier Inn in upstate New York over the course of a week in July and August 2023, it was tracked "live in triplicate," using two complete live performances and a third, "antagonistic" take made without the use of a click track. The three performances were then pieced together subtractively through a lengthy mixing process (shoutout to recording, mixing, and mastering engineer Steve Vealey) to fascinating and off-balance effect. Rong Weicknes marked Fievel Is Glauque's Fat Possum label debut. ~ James Wilkinson & Marcy Donelson