El Fog - Rebuilding Vibes

Wire Magazine
Japanese born, Berlin based dub miniaturist El Fog (Masayoshi Fujita) uses the vibraphone as the basis for electronic treatment on his latest album, produced by Stefan Betke, and the results are cumulatively overwhelming. After the tentative opening of "Broken", on which puffs of vibe drift just out of reach of a bed of fractured, sputtered rhythms, the album gradually assumes its overall shape, as if the vaporised parts of the original instrument were merging back together, piece by piece. There's permanent, remote stand-off between the diaphanous textures and the irregular backbeat, the effect of which, on "Puddlespots And Moonbeams", is quite intoxicating. Imagine, perhaps, a stray fragment of Pharoah Sander's "Astral Travelling" washed up o a distant shore. Lonnie Liston Smith's infinite electric keyboards still reverberating, the tide lapping over it back and forth.

Scanner FM
I received the Fog album Rebuilding Vibes this week and it could possibly be one of my albums of the year already, it's a wonderful exercise in deep, late night listening - smokey, sultry and cerebral - one for those candlelit, contemplative moments

Norman Records
I reckon analogue synths are probably my favourite musical sound but a close contender would be the mighty vibraphone. From Lionel Hampton to Tortoise/Mice Parade there are many fine examples of this instrument at work. El Fog a.k.a Berlin-based Japanese artist Masayoshi Fujita seems pretty keen on the instrument too as he's dedicated an entire project to reworking and rebuilding his own vibraphone recordings on the record entitled 'Rebuilding Vibes' (you see...). His vibraphone interpretations are minimal and electronically infused suggesting the strong influences of Dub and Jazz as well as an appreciation for subtlety and space. Mixed by AOKI Takamasa and mastered by Stefan Betke (a.k.a Pole) 'Rebuilding Vibes', as you can imagine, is thoroughly tasteful stuff.

Indieville
This minimal, jazz-inflected dub release is a titillating headphone gem for those who like their music crisp and atmospheric. Rebuilding Vibes has been intelligently constructed from its component parts, each element tidily organized by skilled producer Masayoshi Fujita, who builds every piece meticulously out of session recordings. And, as the cover and title suggest, the record also serves as an extensive study of the vibraphone. Evident care has been put into every track, with ample attention allotted to each each sound's placement within the compositions. This notion is confirmed right off the bat on "Broken," in which a wiggly bassline, clicky beats, concise hand-claps, and, yes, a soothing vibraphone motif are all located wizardly in step with one another.
The record being highly dub-flavoured, a large emphasis is also placed on the bass and its interactions with the more fluid vibraphone parts. This is especially obvious on delightful "Waterfall," which employs a melodic double bass part that endows the track with a glistening and mysterious demeanour. More joyously studious micro-dub comes in the form of smooth "Space for the Rebuilding" and "November," both of which employ intriguing percussion constructed out of crackly static chirps. However, as the album wears down, the lack of variety can weigh down on the listener a fair bit -- the four instruments remain the same throughout, after all, and the mood is a constant shady noir. Curiously, it's the closer, "Dunst," which changes things up most radically, eschewing the overt beats of its predecessors for a quiet glitch track bolstered by a faint heartbeat rhythm. Somehow, despite overtly departing from the album's main thesis, it's still got that 2:00AM smoky nightclub aura to it.
Rebuilding Vibes is a mature sort of experimental dub album, with the added element of sampled vibraphone making for a cohesive if occasionally homogeneous record. I conceive this as sort of a cross between FS Blumm and early Dabrye, with other points of reference coming by way of early Ninja Tune as well as more experimental labels like Mego and Raster-Noton.

Foxy Digitalis
Combining elements of jazz, dub and glitch/IDM, we have this project of Masayoshi Fujita, along with mixing by Aoki Takamasa. As on the cover, the vibraphone is the main instrument featured here, but it’s combined with glitchy digital beats, as well as standup bass. “Waterfall” is the most “jazz” track on here, featuring live drums and bass, and not a whole lot of electronic processing. “März”, on the other hand, features thick slabs of midtempo Raster-Noton glitch-beats, and dubby waves of vibraphone. “Flip And Dub” amplifies the dub factor even further, turning the bassline into a more pronounced reggae skank, and flipping metallic percussion sound back and forth through the speakers. It’s no coincidence at all that Pole mastered this album, as he made his name well over a decade ago creating dub out of glitchy, broken electronic sounds.
The album continues exploring the spaces between echo-covered vibraphone and crackly processed beats. The vibraphone itself doesn’t seem to be messed around with as much as the beats are, but on the track “!”, the vibraphone gradually gets covered in fuzz and distortion, almost sounding like a digital update of a prepared instrument, until it flames out at the end. Final track “Dunst” sounds like little more than an amplified, slowed heartbeat, with just a few tiny clicks and bass hums.

Chroniques électroniques
Jeune producteur et break-beat maker japonais, Geskia nous avait gratifié d'un superbe premier album en mai 2008, Silent 77. Fidèle à l'excellent et trop méconnu label Flau, Geskia est également apparu sur une compil' de Symbolic Interaction. Tout son talent s'est également étalé avec Vongaku, obscur side project qu'il conduit avec ses compères Chori et Paranel.
Eclipse 323 est un disque de glitch-hop downtempo d'excellent acabit. L'utilisation du laptop, l'approche des breaks, des cuts ainsi que les liquides et fines mélodies font penser à la superbe école Flying Lotus, en certes plus spatial.
Geskia aurait pu se contenter de ça, le hip-hop "futuriste" et "sci-fi" connaissant actuellement de belles heures de gloire. Avec beaucoup de maîtrise technique et ne souffrant jamais d'excès dans la superposition, ce japonais parvient aisément à insérer de cristallines sonorités acoustiques et des phases superbement lugubres qui rappellent le trip-hop du début des 90's.
Ideal Copy (digne de Flying Lotus), Drawing Dawing et Inside Out Nights en sont les meilleurs exemples.
Un seul et minuscule regret : les tracks sont parfois trop courts.
Non content de signer un des meilleurs disques du genre cette année, Geskia s'entoure de la crème abstraite et underground sur les trois remixs qui concluent le disque. Bracken, Caural, mais surtout l'exceptionnel Lukid y vont de leur jolie contribution.
Les charts ne devraient plus tarder à fourmiller de ce hip-hop cybernétique et racé. Face à cette inéluctable indigestion potentielle, il sera nécessaire de faire un tri. Dans une ombre relative, Geskia fait assurément partie des fers de lance du genre, en compagnie de Lukid, Dorian Concept et Flying Lotus. Un "must-have", tout simplement.

Autres Directions
Un peu à la manière de The Boats, qui en son temps avait offert un ravissant hommage numérique au piano (We Made It For You, paru chez Moteer), le japonais El Fog suit aujourd’hui un procédé assez semblable, mettant à l’honneur le vibraphone en le plongeant dans un écrin digital et délicat.
Tirant profit du son feutré et douillet de l’instrument, lequel est à peine remanié, souvent laissé à l’état natif, El Fog crée des climats aérés et relaxants, à cheval entre le jazz nocturne de Lionel Hampton et un dub miniature riche en détails. Avec ses basses synthétiques rondes et profondes, c’est souvent vers ce dernier courant qu’El Fog dévie, usant de beats secs, syncopés et hésitants, instaurant un dub-hip-hop bancal baigné de textures parasites et de légers souffles numériques (Broke, Autumn ou März, dont la précision chirurgicale et l’étonnante qualité de production nous renvoie à l’école scape).
La palette de percussions et de textures s’enrichit occasionnellement d’éléments à la variété indéfinissable (Flip And Dub), au poil rêche et saturé ( !), ou opte pour un réalisme organique faisant de Waterfall une jolie pièce de jazz libre, nocturne et aérien, où les ballets vagabondent sur les fûts et la contrebasse s’affranchit de toute contrainte.
Dans sa seconde moitié, les contours du disque se font plus doux encore, plus abstraits aussi : les notes de vibraphone voient leur attaque s’atténuer pour mieux se liquéfier et adopter des allures lunaires (Above), les rythmiques s’échappent de manière moins ordonnée, tels des feux d’artifice microscopiques (Space For The Rebuilding, Puddlespots And Moonbeams, November), sans jamais créer un quelconque chaos, préférant préserver un cocon des plus chaleureux.

Le son du grisli
Ariste japonais résident berlinois, Masayoshi Fujita aka El Fog inscrit le vibraphone en couverture de cet intéressant disque au rang de ses instruments fétiches. Accompagné d’une discrète électronique aux effets dub jazz, mais aussi de mains qui claquent, d’overdubs ou de boucles samplées, sa musique émet des ondes d’une réconfortante chaleur.
A la fois inscrite dans un continuum où les notes bleues espionnent le passé et interrogent l’avenir, son œuvre mérite le détour. Par moments terriblement groove, notamment lorsqu’une contrebasse présente sans être pesante vient chalouper les interventions très adroites de percussions héritées de Martin Brandlmayr, l’album pèche toutefois par une certaine uniformité sonore. Non que pris individuellement chaque titre soit inintéressant, simplement la sensation étrange de visiter différentes pièces d’un même manoir où chaque endroit serait peuplé de l’esprit identique des grands de ce monde qui nous ont précédé.

RNE 3
Comenzamos nuestra descarga de novedades con la última entrega del japones afincado en Berlín Masayoshi Fujita Aka El Fog.
"Rebuilding Vibes" es el titulo de este trabajo cuyo rango se desplaza desde el Dub al jazz, el hiphop y la electrónica.
Entre otras cosas, una de las características de este magnífico album de Fujita, es el empeño del japonés en descubrir las posibilidades del Vibráfono. Podemos percibir perfectamente fraseos individuales y suaves cercanos al jazz, fuertes impactos rítmicos intrincados con clicks ruidistas, Loops, Over Dub y por supuesto samples creados por el propio El Fog.
"Rebuilding Vibes" ha sido magníficamente mezclado por Aoki Takamasa, quien también ha contribuidos al cover del album y Stephan Betke a.k.a Pole ha sido el responsable de la masterización. Desde luego con esos nombres el resultado final promete ser brillante.

Smallfish
Well, I feel somewhat happier now having filled this slightly blatant hole in the Smallfish catalogue! I’m glad to be able to bring you some Flau releases at last and I have to say that there are few better ways of kicking things off than with this absolutely stunning album from El Fog. Far be it for me to go on about music that I love (yeah, right…), but this really is a total gem of low-key, delicate goodness. El Fog’s previous album on Moteer is something that I go back to time and time again and I can see that this is going to have exactly the same effect on me. The theme of these tracks is the restructuring and processing of vibe sounds and the way they’ve been crafted is lovely. Deep, mellow phrases have been captured and turned into hypnotic, slightly glitchy little masterpieces of how to put together a subtle and incredibly considered sound. You’ll hear the occasional hint of some of Jan Jelinek’s old work in the scratchy, abstract nature of the tracks here, but the rhythms tend to err towards a more classic electronica sound, perfectly underpinning the chord-based melody structures. There’s a hell of a lot to get out of this marvellous album and each listen will reveal a hidden moment that you missed before (I’m on my tenth listen and still hearing little sounds and touches that weren’t apparent on the last listen) and that, really, is one of the beauties of this release. Pure gold all the way and a heck of a good way to start things off with this excellent Japanese imprint. Highly recommended!

Boomkat
Berlin-dwelling Japanese artist Masayoshi Fujita returns for another album as El Fog, here combining beautiful, warm glitch-flecked electronics with jazz-influenced phrasing and instrumentation. Some of Rebuilding Vibes comes across like a super-glossy take on Jan Jelinek's deconstruction techniques, taking apart deep, soulful source recordings with a scalpel-like level of precision. Vibraphone motifs and granulated rhythms all come into play, making this a relatively economical but massively immersive listen. Every individual piece sounds like a smaller part of an over-arching, unified whole, and while on paper the constituent parts of 'Marz' and 'Space For Rebuilding' seem similar, you'll relish the chance to languish in each track's shifting soundscape. Rebuilding Vibes is also notable for its deft engineering: Progressive Form veteran Aoki Takamasa mixed the album and Pole's Stefan Betke mastered it, meaning that the record could hardly be more finely polished.

Textura
El Fog's Rebuilding Vibes feels so much like a quintessential ~scape project, it's only fitting that Polemeister Stephan Betke mastered the album. The sleeve credits Masayoshi Fujita (originally from Japan and currently Berlin-based) with “vibraphone and production,” which could suggest that the album's a bare-bones collection of solo vibes playing; in fact, it's considerably more than that, as Fujita augments the instrument with, in some cases, the jazz-flavoured accompaniment of a bassist and drummer and, in others, with a texturally enhanced, electronic-styled backing of minimal slo-funk pulses and broken beats (the opening “Broken” an exemplar). As a result, the material is at times a bit Pole-like in the precision of its sound design, in particular a track such as “Flip and Dub” where a slow-motion dub bass line snakes its way through a jazz-funk stream of bluesy vibes soloing, and reminiscent of 1+3+1, the collaboration between Triosk and Jan Jelinek laid down in 2003. Though “!” gets its glitch-funk freak on for a wild three minutes, Rebuilding Vibes is generally languorous in tone, with tracks like “Autumn” and “Space for the Rebuilding” etching out relaxed electro-acoustic spaces dominated by the groan of acoustic bass, smears of static, and the sparkle of the vibraphone; the becalmed closer “Dunst” even flirts with 12k and Line territory in its embrace of micro-sound stillness. Fujita, whose first album Reverberate Slowly was issued in 2007 on Moteer, uses loops, self-sampling, cut-and-paste techniques, and processing to build his sound into the multi-layered form captured on the album. Imagine the warm shimmer produced by a jazz vibraphone player dropped into the center of a prototypical ~scape album and you've got a pretty good idea of Rebuilding Vibes' mellow, early morning sound.

Bleep43
It is always a breath of fresh air to find musicians willing to experiment with the vibraphones, a much-underused instrument outside of the realm of jazz. So I welcome the efforts of Berlin-based Japanese artist Fujita Masayoshi who, under the stage name El Fog, exhibits a willingness to take the vibraphones’ unique sound in new directions. “Rebuilding Vibes,” produced by Flau, is an interesting work that explores the versatility of its sound. The album’s 12 tracks make use of disparate musical influences—from jazz to ambient and experimental—in an attempt to create interesting and cerebral soundscapes.
True to the album’s title, Fujita seeks to rebuild conceptions of how the vibraphones can be used in experimental music. He makes use of the vibraphones’ sound in new and unique ways, both to forge interesting backgrounds and, every so often, to solo above them. The soundscapes he creates are always intriguing and mellow, and at times are quite pretty. As such, Fujita succeeds in showing the depth of this oft-underused instrument. And every now and again, in songs like “Waterfall,” “Flip and Dub,” and “Patterns,” Fujita does a vibraphone run that teases the listener with his potential.
Yet the vibes’ interesting soundscapes are contrasted with percussion and drum programming that feel both under-marinated and undercooked. The album’s introductory track, “Broken,” begins with a haphazardly programmed percussion of clicks and glitchy sounds, and then morphs into samples of hand clapping. Yet this percussion does not blend well, and pulls the listener’s attention away from the interesting background. This, in fact, happens on many tracks. The audio samples in “Flip and Dub” are no less cacophonous, conjuring images of a machine producing widgets in an inefficient manner. The drum programming, in short, is perhaps too highbrow and modern for me.
“Rebuilding Vibes,” in short, is intellectual music. I appreciate Fujita’s willingness to produce such exploratory and cerebral music, and applaud him for defying traditional conventions. But while he is successful in using the vibraphones to create ambient and interesting soundscapes, he does not follow through with other elements to create truly memorable tracks. Moreover, Fujita’s music shines when he moves closer to the realm of jazz (with tracks like “Waterfall”), making this reviewer wish that he chose to foreground these jazz influences to a greater degree. But these moments remain few and far between. Jazz influences remain relegated to the background. In the end, I want to like “Rebuilding Vibes” more than I actually do. Whatever the case, the album deserves a good listen, and no doubt enthusiasts of intellectual experimental music will find much to take away from this album.

M-la-music
Le japonais El Fog, Masayohi Fujita, vient de livrer son dernier album Rebuilding Vibes où le vibraphone retrouve de l'écho. Un vibraphone qui sera poussé dans des directions dub percutantes et pertinentes, variées et précises.
Above est une petite pièce nouvelle d'abstract dub, ou, juste un dub machiavéliquement pensé. Le onzième titre " !" sonnera comme une hybride d'electronica trip hop, c'est entouré de basses bien rondes. "Flip and dub" et "Waterfall" clignoteront jazzy, un peu cotton club du XXIIème siècle. "März", sera la petite planète sonore où les sons rebondiront et vous intrigueront. Il suffira de tendre l'oreille pour entendre Š
Empreint de minimalisme (Waterfall), d'une touche de jazz opportune (Pattern), adepte d'une electronica rigoureuse et référencée, El Fog tente de vous faire découvrir un autre pan du vibraphone et peut-être d'une electronica qui plonge dans le dub ou l'inverse pour faire émerger une réelle nouvelle proposition musicale.

Eletcronique
Secondo album per il giapponese trapiantato a Berlino Masayoshi Fujita, in arte El Fog, questa volta per la relativamente giovane label del sol levante Flau.
El Fog sperimenta le possibili soluzioni partendo dal suono di un vibrafono, manipolandone l'output tramite taglia a cuci, e loop dei vari frammenti.
Nella costruzione dei brani si affida ad un'estetica jazz scarnificata, servendosi di scorie ritmiche offuscate e gocce sonore di varia matrice, da note di piano a semplici quanto efficaci click distribuiti randomicamente.
Il lavoro esce dal suo guscio pian piano, evolvendosi da uno stato di cosciente rarefazione fino ad aggregarsi in humus organico e melodico nel suo minimalismo.
In alcuni brani si ha quasi la percezione di una dinamica hip hop, pur se appena accennata, parliamo di segmenti come "Flip and Dub" o ancora "Above".
El Fog dipinge elettronica elegante, uno di quei sofisticatissimi ricami dove tutto è concesso, dal passaggio più complicato alla variante di colore intensa e dal canto suo distaccata. E' qualcosa che ti prende nell'animo, una musica che accompagna l'utente nell'ascolto, con grazia ed intrigante sensualità.
A volte ci troviamo a riflettere su quale debba essere il ruolo della musica nella nostra vita.
Ascoltando lavori come questo vien da affermare che la musica è quel determinato lasso di tempo che ci provoca soddisfazione e benessere, un tempo da dedicare a noi stessi che può essere tanto votato alla riflessione quanto completamente dedicato alla pura astrazione dalla realtà.
Questo disco è un percorso che vi viene offerto, stà a voi decidere in che modo intraprenderne la strada. 4.5/5

EtherREAL
Après avoir « récupéré » Novisad et Orla Wren, flau signe un nouvel artiste en rupture de label avec cet album d'El Fog, Japonais qui nous avait offert, il y a près de trois ans, un disque tout à fait convaincant sur Moteer. À l'époque, on avait souligné les qualités de son electronica minimale en regrettant toutefois une forme de retenue timide qui portait un peu préjudice à la musique de Masayoshi Fujita. Changement de braquet avec ce Rebuilding Vibes dont l'intitulé et la pochette nous laissent deviner qu'il va majoritairement être composé au vibraphone.
Et, précisément, hormis quelques exceptions, les onze titres de cet album mettent en avant cet instrument à tubes et le font dialoguer avec des structures electronica (petites rythmiques, mini-clicks'n'cuts, tapotements divers) pour un résultat qui tient alors autant de cette forme musicale que d'un avant-jazz pas si fréquent dans son développement (auto-sampling du vibraphone, traitement réverbéré de ses sonorités). Ainsi, même quand ce sont les éléments électroniques qui semblent dominer (Flip And Dub et ses consonances métalliques, telles des plaques ferrailleuses frappées l'une contre l'autre, Autumn et la précision de ses rythmiques ou ! et ses sonorités plus acérées), le vibraphone permet d'ajouter liant, profondeur et contrepoint.
Quand électronique et vibraphone interviennent à égalité, l'alliage proposé favorise la combinaison de la rudesse de la première et de la suavité du second (Patterns), si bien que dimensions clinique et décorative s'écartent mutuellement afin de livrer un excellent album, donnant l'occasion à El Fog d'indéniablement franchir un palier. 7/8