Fievel Is Glauque
Biography Fievel Is Glauque
Fievel Is Glauque
The Brooklyn/Brussels band Fievel is Glauque composed of American bandleading keyboardist Zach Phillips, French singer Ma Clément and a rotating cast of musicians spread out across the globe.
Fievel Is Glauque’s rising popularity has been as organic as it has been accidental. Phillips (a DIY polymath previously known for his OSR Tapes label and approximately fifty other albums under various names) and Clément met in Brussels, Belgium, where a mutual friend connected them in a bid to convince Zach to make an album during his stay there. While on route to meet, Zach hit his head on a street pole and was in need of care. As a sign of fate, Ma was also a trained nurse and was able to help clear him of any severe consequences of concussion. After a short practice the following day, the two fell into working together and gradually found themselves in a years-long musical partnership.
Lyrically switching between English and Ma’s native tongue of French, the words are created in an unusual process involving psychoanalytic dialectic, automatic writing, and interlinguistic translation of apparent gibberish, while musically the band’s songs dart between passages of pure mainline pop melody, microtonal flourishes and addictive non-sequiteur sonics.
The band released a Bandcamp compilation album of live mono cassette recordings titled “God’s Trashmen Sent To Right The Mess on New Years Day 2021”, with their debut full-length “Flaming Swords” the first fruits of Phillips and Clément working together as a composing duo, released in November 2022 (on Thanksgiving holiday) in the wake of an extensive US tour with Stereolab.
Newly-signed to Fat Possum with a double single release of ‘I’m Scanning Things I Can’t See / Dark Dancing’, the band’s first album on the label will land in 2024.
‘Avant-garde-jazz pop duo Fievel Is Glauque is one of the most singular and inspiring new bands in the world’ – Stereogum
‘It is heady but not stuffy, precise but not rigid, dense but not cluttered.’ – Pitchfork about “Flaming Swords”
