Description
2020 was supposed to be the plague year, one and done. Then wave after wave came crashing; political and social upheavals, pandemic variants, climate catastrophe 2.0 and all that jazz ground on into the twenty-one and beyond. The re-opening bloom withers on the stem and we’re still stuck in our rooms, but now there’s no sympathy, we have to go back out and drink through masks. Human connection is corroding; we’ve learned to live with our new a-hole roommate, which is pretty much us, but worse, and more. The old ways are corrupted. Gathering feels weird. The internet is fraught.
The new normal sucks and that’s a fact and here’s another: FPE’s turning ten! Ten years since December 1, 2011, when the text document whose only contents were “For Practically Everyone” got stored on a hard drive in a suburb of Chicago. The little bit of data was a seed planted by a person who kinda knew how to make a record label, at least enough to make lots of records and lots of mistakes. Fortunately he had a big basement to store the unsold backstock.
FPE’s marking the decade milestone with its fortieth release (give or take). This one’s the second of two adventurous compilations bookending 2021. Like its predecessor, A Compilation For Practically Everyone, FPEXL presents mostly electronic sounds, from almost every continent, eschewing the familiar and embracing the next. It’s a nighttime journey coalescing around what’s become a central theme for many in this tough year: community.
This community is using the internet to mediate the world; reaching out to people who have begun to broadcast their particular version of the same message: chasing music will always be unremorsefully first.* From India, Akrti and Disco Puppet; from Europe, Ziúr (Germany) and Anushka Chkheidze (Georgia). From Africa, Pö (Uganda), 3xOJ (Morocco), and Eat My Butterfly (Réunion); from South America, Qetsy (Paraguay). A bunch from the US. Fifteen exclusive, original tracks, all except one by a solo creator. Head bobbing, chest swaying, ears filled with right on. Sounds for moving and feeling; physical and mental sounds. Everyone’s on their little trip, all of us going about our little lives, maybe fearful of what’s next, but living and creating, not completely alone, now.
*Gratitude to Colin Langenus for the motto
FPEXL will be released by FPE Records on cassette and digital December 1, 2021.
