The story of SENSATIONS' FIX begins – and never quite ends – with
FRANCO FALSINI. Blazing a trail for DIY recording in his early years,
Falsini employed a floor model mini-moog and a tricked out Teac
4-track as the core of his home studio. His basement recordings
became the launching pad for SENSATIONS' FIX. Featuring Falsini's
unique and meditative blend of cosmically laced electronics and
soaring guitar, much of the mostly instrumental music from those
sessions surfaced in 1974 as SENSATIONS' FIX's first official album,
Fragments Of Light. Though Italian, Falsini's approach to the music
on Fragments drew closer comparisons to contemporaries like TANGERINE
DREAM and POPUL VUH than the RPI bands of the day.
With drummer KEITH EDWARDS and bassist RICHARD URSILLO, Falsini took
the music into a more ambitious direction resulting in the more
aggressive and complex Portable Madness. More albums followed,
including Finest Finger and Falsini's solo recording from 1975, Cold
Nose. Many of these albums are today considered classics of 70s
progressive rock and space music.
The 21st century has seen a resurgence of interest in Falsini and
SENSATIONS' FIX. Falsini's fondness for innovation and defying
expectations resulted in music that has embraced prog, ambient, rock,
kosmische and psychedelia, and the albums of SENSATIONS' FIX are
prescient of electronic, ambient and post rock music being made in the
2000s.
As Nick Neyland (Pitchfork) explains, "Only after the dust settled did
Sensations' Fix get their dues, primarily through DJ Shadow sampling
them on The Private Press, but also in a gallery retrospective curated
by Sonic Youth, and via Daniel Lopatin dropping a track by the band
into a FACT mix. What's striking ...is how easily you can trace the
central aesthetic of many future bands and genres... The bass-heavy
"Left Side of the Green" bears the spidery cadence of post rock; "Dark
Side of Religion" is an unnervingly precise proto-Spacemen 3 cut;
"Cold Nose Story" acts as a precursor to the fuzzy yearnings of
Bristolians Flying Saucer Attack; "Fortune Teller" predates Ben
Chasny's astral-folk projections as Six Organs of Admittance by many
decades...It might be a stretch to cast Falsini as some kind of indie
rock soothsayer, but it's clear...that he was testing out ground that
would later be explored in a great deal of depth."
Or as Joe Perez (Impose Magazine) states, SENSATIONS' FIX was
recording "in their basement in the '70s what much of the music world
wants to record now."
SENSATIONS' FIX (Italy) joins NECROMONKEY (Sweden), THE GALACTIC
COWBOY ORCHESTRA (US), LUZ DE RIADA (Mexico) and KOTEBEL (Spain) at
ProgDay 2014, the 20th Anniversary of the longest running progressive
rock festival in the world. ProgDay 2014 will take place on Saturday,
August 30th, and Sunday, August 31st, at Storybook Farm in Chapel
Hill, North Carolina. For more information, and to hear music from
this year's bands, please visit us atwww.progday.net.
--
Progressive Rock & Progressive Metal - E-Zine
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