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My first impression of this album was that it sounded like a continuation of No Pussyfooting, the only Fripp and Eno album that I've heard. There are a lot of similarities — both feature a two-man-band, with one musician playing "soundscape" style guitar and the other adding all sorts of electronics and keyboards to the mix. But Fossil Culture takes the concept further and updates it with the pulsing rhythms of drum machines, chiming bells, and dance beats. There are even some samples added in here and there — screaming monkeys, pouring water, fizzing soda, etc. The overall tone of the music seems darker, denser and angrier than its predecessor. The Fripp and Eno music could be considered ambient, but Frohmader and Pinhas' creations are too aggressive and rhythm-heavy to fit into that category. Sometimes the added rhythmic elements make for interesting contrasts. There's a section of track 5 where a danceable beat is set against a very static, floating wall-of-guitar to create a fairly disorienting effect. The end result is music that can't quite be used as background "wallpaper" music, but also doesn't have enough melodic elements to make active listening easy either. It's interesting stuff to listen to and analyze, but 72 minutes of it is more than I can take in one sitting. review by Bob Eichler — 5-14-05 —

b r a n d o n

This collaboration between electronic music wizard Peter Frohmader and famed prog-rock guitarist Richard Pinhas (Heldon) brings no surprises in its overall mood: dark, edgy, somber, unsettling. While one might expect such a collaboration between two experimental electronic musicians to be somewhat ambient in character ("as ignorable as it is interesting," in the words of Brian Eno), there's no hint of restraint on Fossil Culture. Both musicians fill up every second of this lengthy album with maximalistic sound: Frohmader with all sorts of heavy-handed beats and electronic odds-and-ends, and Pinhas with an overstated guitar style that some might call "wanky," but that is tempered by fairly understated production that places his guitar even with, rather than forward of, Frohmader's electronic twiddling. Nevertheless, when Pinhas' guitar comes crashing down after an intro full of long, foreboding tones in the first track, it is awfully effective even if the volume level doesn't go up any. Indeed, Pinhas' guitar work is mind-bendingly advanced at times here, and its muffled nature makes it all the more mysterious and unsettling. Frohmader offers a complimentary array of sounds and huge, foreboding rhythms — indeed, these rhythms may be too heavy-handed for some, particularly on the later tracks where they become almost techno-ish. However, the final two tracks, on which those beats get all the more forward, are my favorites, as both musicians crank up the aggression level to cathartic heights. Make no mistake, though: this is no headbanger's album. The aggression and guitar shredding always stubbornly avoids approaching anything resembling conventional melody, for one thing; Pinhas' guitar work is something of a cross between Frippian Soundscapes and David Torn-like almost-melodies. For another thing, the aforementioned unusual production never places any particular sound far enough up in the mix for it to become a real focal point; everything is fairly even. Some might find this mix flat, but I think it works well in the context of an album that almost works as ambient music if it weren't so consistently edgy. It's that flirting with genre boundaries, and that refusal to play nice, that makes Fossil Culture a success. review by Brandon Wu — 5-8-05 —