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Liquid

by Phicus

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Elwood P. Dowd
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  • Streaming + Download

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  • Limited Edition Cassette
    Cassette + Digital Album

    Limited edition of 100 on Tripticks Tapes.
    European orders only.

    For ROTW orders or digital album go to:

    triptickstapes.bandcamp.com/album/liquid

    Includes unlimited streaming of Liquid via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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European merch orders.

For digital downloads/ROTW orders go to:

triptickstapes.bandcamp.com/album/liquid


From the very beginning of the band there has been a dichotomy in the heart of Phicus' music: for every loud and aggressive impulse there's an instinct that leads back to the more meditative and static territories. A ying for every yang. A cold and hidden dark side of the moon.

The initial plan for the recording of the second album was to make something louder, sludgier, much nastier than the first release Plom or their collaborations with Martin Küchen and Illia Belorukov. During the live European dates of the previous year they had been playing noisier and harder than ever before, building sets around down-tuned double bass bowings, guitar feedback and sulphurous drumming. It was fun. It was wild. It felt natural for the band to plan the recording session in that direction.

And, in a way, that was how the session went. The working titles speak for themselves: several "Doom" pieces, "Gorecki Hardcore"… as always happens, it wasn't exactly as planned, but it worked out quite well. Much of the music included in Solid (Astral Spirits 2020) was from these early sessions. They were excited about finally making the "loud" album, but....

...but, as said before, the double nature of Phicus started to play its games. What if what they just recorded was some sort of "photographic negative" of another album, the "real" one that they should be making instead? Or maybe they should do this "other" album, the "quiet one", to work as a canvas for the "real" one? Who is the doppelganger and who is the "me"?

So they just did it. They moved the double bass outside of the cabin where it was placed for the previous day sessions, turned down the amps and started playing some of their most meditative music to date. And the point is that it was easy. Not just easy, it was effortless. The very first 40 minutes of music from this "alternative" session are captured here on Liquid.

Taken as an isolated piece of music it works as the best display yet of the band's more contemplative playing. A faded photography of an almost forgotten memory. Beautiful but slightly unsettling. But if you take it as a part of a bigger picture you can't avoid finding echoes of its sibling's brutality everywhere. A slab of distorted guitar is now a subtle long tone, the metallic growl of the cymbals is now a shimmering bell-like sound, the savage multiphonics are now gentle bowed harmonics. Nothing really disappearing, just suffering a change. Sea-change, into something rich and strange.

From solid state to liquid state. And back.

credits

released March 23, 2021

Ferran Fages -. electric guitar
Àlex Reviriego - double bass
Vasco Trilla - drums

Recorded April 26th 2019 at Rosazul Studio, Barcelona by Jan Valls Miralles
Mixed by Jan Valls Miralles
Mastered by Lasse Marhaug
All music by Phicus

Cover image by Jasmine Parsia

released by Tripticks Tapes

triptickstapes.bandcamp.com

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Phicus image

Phicus Barcelona, Spain

They speculate with silence, pull the noise out of joint, rearrange the timbre, scrap the tradition to explore their very own harmonic universe forged of the energy of a blazing forest into flame, where solely simple, lanceolate, obverse-shining leaves remain alive.

Ferran Fages: electric guitar

Àlex Reviriego: double bass

Vasco Trilla: drums ... more

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