Hop-Frog's Fatwa: The Silk Road
URCKarm Recordings

While Hop-Frog's Fatwa's regrettable name choice might suggest frivolity, its music is anything but. The Silk Road comprises nine tracks, most in the eight to twelve minute range, though the work itself unfurls in an uninterrupted, seventy-minute stream; the album's mood is dystopic and doom-laden, the sound a fusion of dark electronics with Arabic elements. Of course, Muslimgauze and Material (in its more global guise) spring to mind as obvious analogues yet, whatever sonic overlaps may exist, Hop-Frog's Fatwa relentlessly pursues its own determinedly uncommercial vision.

Sonically, The Silk Road splits into two halves. The work commences with a lethargic, becalmed drift of tablas, organs, and sinuous vocals, eventually joined by an insistently throbbing pulse and recurring bell tone that will persist throughout the first half, increasing in tension as the work grows in density. The halfway mark (“Persian Multiplication Perfume”) finds the bell-laden pulse overlaid by a mass of droning violins, electronic clatter, and voice samples. Abruptly, however, the pulse fades, ceding the stage to a simple melodica-like motif and haunted noises, and the episode slows to a peaceful close. In the second half, the work turns nightmarish, moans and jungle noises conjuring sickly, hallucinatory atmospheres. Portentous industrial throbs, ghostly murmurs, and somber themes dominate, the sound now largely electronic and the piece becoming more fragmented and disorientated as it entropically winds down.

Does The Silk Road trace the trajectory from native purity to despoilment through foreign intervention? Any number of interpretations is possible, though certainly an anti-Bush reading tops the list. While projects of this type often succumb to excess, Hop-Frog's Fatwa's narcotized travelogue is rather poised, especially for a debut, and the group demonstrates restraint in its handling of material. The album is too long, though; a judiciously edited, fifty-minute version would have more effectively relayed its grim message.

February 2005