Wisteria Fade, by fmvee

Wisteria Fade

by fmvee

supported by

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

€9 EUR or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Heavy weight double vinyl LP. One-off limited run of 200 copies. Comes with an extra download code as a gift for a friend.

Includes unlimited streaming of Wisteria Fade via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 7 days

Purchasable with gift card

€25 EUR or more

1.	Nenette 07:00	buy track
2.	10000 Days Of Rain 02:27	buy track
3.	Cupid 03:00	buy track
4.	World Tendency 08:21	buy track
5.	Budding Tip Encased In Gel 02:51	buy track
6.	Moth Exo Turned To Dust 03:44	buy track
7.	Frogpattern 04:16	buy track
8.	Monarch In Crepe Myrtle Ash 07:47	buy track
9.	Iso Season Evap 05:13	buy track
10.	Darling Exile 02:59	buy track
11.	After All The Tears 05:37	buy track
12.	Desiring Fields 09:02	buy track

about

Ideas of life, death, and the endlessly cyclical nature of these two conditions, loom large on Wisteria Fade, the debut album by Maryland-based artist Matthew J Rogers aka fmvee. Recording began in spring 2020, and fmvee’s hybrid approach of acoustic and synthetic sounds with human voice captures this unmistakable seasonal shift. But these beguiling compositions, a mix of ambient, mutant jazz, and woozy pop songcraft, channel both the hope and uneasiness of such flux. Together their mass of auditory entanglements yield a strange yet beautiful flower.

Having returned to Maryland, fmvee recorded its frogs, insects, and cooing swans while excavating samples saved from his time in LA — friends, street noises, everyday occurrences. These twin elements were transformed into digital instruments, arranged to convey a sound he refers to as both “deathly blissful” and “tearing apart.” On the one hand, Cupid, an uncanny soundscape of chirruping birds, delicate wind chimes, and whirring electronics. On the other, the distorted synth wash of Darling Exile, reflecting both the violence of spring and an acute sense of heartbreak.

Importantly, we hear the artist sing for the first time on Wisteria Fade. Throughout the opening track, Nenette, he appears as a ghostly apparition, cloaked in a mist of digital noise, before his voice is pushed to the foreground on World Tendency skirting above collapsing synths and a lurching insistent beat. At times, as on Iso Season Evap, fmvee’s half-sung, half-spoken delivery evokes Robert Wyatt. “I feel far away,” he croons, backed by tremulous piano and gleaming synths — a dream-pop ballad that bristles with a thoroughly modern sense of alienation.

Despite the prevalence of nature, Wisteria Fade isn’t straightforwardly pastoral. fmvee’s sounds are too destabilising, his lyrics too personal for such a reading, and together they gently recall Psychic TV’s wyrd industrial psychedelia. At the album’s close, we hear the full extent of this approach. Desiring Fields unites the bucolic and bruising with haunting piano and deep, slippery beat. On After All The Tears, the artist invites us into their universe more intimately than ever. fmvee sings: “A mother and son/ casting longer shadows/ Drinking in the meantime.” Finding inspiration in Yasujiro Ozu’s 1936 film The Only Son, he grapples with human life — what a successful existence looks like, and a keenly felt pressure to conform.

fmvee ultimately eschews conventional resolutions, musically or otherwise. “Don’t stop”, he writes in accompanying notes to Wisteria Fade, a fittingly insistent phrase for music that blooms, swells, and contracts as if in its own state of near-constant transformation.

credits

released March 21, 2022

℗ + © sunless 2022
All tracks written and produced by fmvee
Melodica and saxophone on B3 by Andrew Crane
Mastering by Wouter Brandenburg
Graphic Design by Alex Walker
Words by Lewis Gordon

license

about

sunless Netherlands

Playful music and things.

hello[at]sunless.link

contact / help

Contact sunless

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Wisteria Fade, you may also like:

Matanzas
by MJ Guider

supported by 6 fans who also own “Wisteria Fade”
go to album
Limitless Frame
by Ulla

supported by 6 fans who also own “Wisteria Fade”

Ces gens qui construisent toute leur personnalité autour du fait qu’ils aiment les tardigrades. Vincent Giard
go to album
spirit desire
by ben bondy

supported by 5 fans who also own “Wisteria Fade”

Never going to forget Ben sitting under an umbrella perform live while eating a pizza slice and performing an epic live set in the garden of my favorite club in Amsterdam where you left me almost crying out of joy due to his warm-hearted sound…blessed moment of pure joy! 🙏🏻🔥🧘‍♂️😱 Dely
go to album
You Fucken Sucker
by Paul de Jong

The former member of The Books explores disappointment and despair on his brilliant new record. Bandcamp Album of the Day Apr 4, 2018
go to album
Things That Grow
by Cara Stacey

Stacey teams up with members of Polar Bear to create enchanting and hypnotic music from southern African bows. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 8, 2015
go to album
The Living World's Demands
by Ami Dang

The Baltimore composer’s latest plays like a collage, each track emphasizing a different facet of her style. Bandcamp Album of the Day Nov 8, 2022
go to album
Aurora
by Unknown Mobile

supported by 5 fans who also own “Wisteria Fade”
go to album