Faunts

Eno, The Orb, Underworld, Radiohead, and Loscil are a few notable electronic/indie standard-bearers who dazzle listeners with their subtle, sublime, amorphous music. The term “ambient” doesn’t do justice to these artists, who incorporate cinematic features, dub bass, layered melodies and of course, clever rhythmic addition and subtraction. Now, add Edmonton, Canada’s classy five-piece ensemble Faunts to the aforementioned list of dream-inducing sound sculptors, with their new M4 EP as compositional evidence.

The five-song EP, available now on Friendly Fire Recordings, was created for a live performance hosted by the Film And Video Arts Society, to accompany three independent short films. Hence, the music patiently unfolds in lush widescreen scenes, with gentle electronic beats and dense synths surrounded by an effect-drenched fog. Faunts have honed their sound over a career spanning seven years, which has included recording the 2005 album High Expectations/Low Results (Friendly Fire) and playing live with fellow Canucks Broken Social Scene, Stars, and Do Make Say Think.

A second album is in the works for fall 2008. A remix companion to the LP will also be released, with contributions from Cadence Weapon, Trail of Dead, Copy, and others. - XLR8R.com

Edmonton’s Faunts fit comfortably in the niche designed by Arts & Crafts acts like Broken Social Scene and Stars. Part groove-based rock soundscapes, part moody pop romanticism, the quartet released their debut album, High Expectations, Low Results, late last year. Though the album may not have received the deserved widespread attention, the band recently signed with Friendly Fire, a New York-based label and plan to have an album out shortly. "Memories of Places We’ve Never Been" is an amiable slice of heartbreaking pop music, filled with sad tinges of electronic programming and vocals bashful enough to make you blush.

-Cam Lindsay (1/1/2006)
- Exclaim!

Furthering the assumption that Alberta is starting to make its mark on the country, Edmonton’s Faunts put their best foot forward with a mix of post-rock build-ups and indie stylings that happily doesn’t live up to their unfortunate album title, but still makes just the barest of missteps. Opener “High Expectations” is strictly paint-by-numbers post-rock, essentially leading the way for the raw “Instantly Loved” that, through its thunderous crashes, demands attention. This standard is somewhat diminished, though, by the dreamy pop quality of “Memories of Place We’ve Never Seen,” and so, a little pattern is established. Moving between the crashing instrumental highs and shoegazer pop, Faunts create an interesting musical mix that would most likely be a potent live offering. Appreciating the humble nature of the title is hard, though, when the pitch-perfect melancholy of the epic “Gone with the Day” show a band that does the exact opposite. As befitting the inherent imagery in the title, this track floats along at a resplendently slow pace, allowing the vocals to echo away like some lost goal. Faunts may bounce around the spectrum of genres, but when they get it right, it is hardly a shitty result. (Friendly Fire)

-Chris Whibbs (Nov 2005) - Exclaim!

A little bit Radiohead, a little bit Sigur Rós, and very much immersed in ethereal dream pop, this strong debut from Edmonton's Faunts is a welcome addition to Canada's growing roster of intriguing rock bands (playing shows with Broken Social Scene and Do Make Say Think has surely helped). As the record makes its way through such stellar moments as "Instantly Loved" and "Place I've Found," keyboards blend with guitars, and the vocals, although never prominent, sail steadily through the mix. In fact, the band's use of instruments is more than enough to create an intense experience. The 13-minute, snail-paced "Gone with the Day" adds slowcore and country to the relaxed atmosphere, greatly expanding the band's palette. And High Expectations/Low Results surprises as much as it soothes: a vocoder enters the picture on "Twenty-Three" while at the same time Faunts seem to be nodding to '70s psychedelia. A satisfying record for any fan of spacy rock.

-Kenyon Hopkin (Oct 2005) - All Music Guide

There's just something about music that is slow and mysterious, foggy and indistinct, fuzzy and dreamlike that just gets me everytime. Any sort of music sounds better to me, once it's buried in record crackle, or wrapped in thick swirls of fuzzy distortion, or smeared with a gauzy ambient haze. But the music of Faunts is so perfectly suited to being goergeously obfuscated that it's hard to imagine this music any other way.

High Expectations doesn't sound like some crystal clear recording that was later treated with all sort of foggy filters, no this record sounds like it was created like this, birthed from some mysterious ether, a ghostlike sonic wraith, dreamy droney slow motion rock drifting skyward like some disembodied slowcore spectre. Blissy and incandescent, with a candelit churchlike warmth, a glow suffusing the air all around. Like a druggier more fuzzy Low. Each track a lugubrious creep, romantic and melancholy, hushed vocals, brushed drums and swoonsome lapsteel. Occasionally the songs build to a ferocious climax, the sound like a wall of blown out shoegaze guitars, with big distorted drums, beneath squiggly white hot traces of incendiary psychedelic skree, before drifting back to earth, a slow simmer, fuzzy melodies drifitng over and around ethereal vocals and muted mood rock minimalism.

Imagine a late night slowcore band, viewed through fogged up glass, thick with running rainwater, everything wavery and blisssfully unfocused, every once in a while the headlights of a passing car flare brilliantly, spinning wild prisms of color and white hot sparkles before fading back to a muted dusky drift.
High Expectations has lots of varied elements, even if they only surface briefly here and there, some jazzy shuffle, some jangly indie rock, some Flaming Lips-ish big beat drug pop, some epic Godspeed-ish, even a bit of near-new wave, but those disparate elements all manage to get woven deftly and beautifully into Faunts' delicate and drowsy sonic world.

-amazon.com (03/19/2006) - Aquarius Records

Part of me hopes that High Expectations/Low Results isn't as successful as it's destined -- or at least deserves -- to be. Given that Faunts specialize in the sort of icy post-rock that defines acts like Sigur Rós, people are sure to draw a connection between their music and the fact they come from Canada, a country hardly known for its warm climes. It's disheartening that just as Canada is becoming known for something other than snowy, icy music, it produces an act that sounds exactly like everyone's assumptions about Canadian weather.
Of course, the main reason it's disheartening is because it's true, at least for a large chunk of the year. Faunts' home city, Edmonton, may not have extreme temperatures, but simply by virtue of its geographic position, its winters tend to be subzero, and the feelings those frigid conditions create emerge throughout High Expectations/Low Results. The volume's slow upward creep in opener "High Expectations", for example, will sound a lot like a cold winter morning to anyone who has ever experienced one (and the addition of wind -- or something that sounds just like it -- doesn't hurt the effect). Similarly, the disembodied vocals in tracks like "Places I've Found" and "Instantly Love" recall the way Sigur Rós work Jonsi Birgisson's Hopelandish singing into their music. In both cases, the actual content of the vocals is secondary; what matters most is how they work within the context of the music. For Faunts, it adds a current of unease to the material, much as winter's absolute stillness creates an odd sense of foreboding if you're out in it for too long.
There's another reason for the Sigur Rós comparison: much like the Icelandic band, Faunts do an excellent job of infusing their post-rock compositions with warmth, rather than hiding behind a wall of feedback. As cold and imposing as "Parler de la pluie et du beau temps" is -- due largely to guitars that sound like whalesong backed by keyboard white noise -- another keyboard track raises the temperature with jazzy noodling. "Memories of Places We've Never Been" leans heavily on this jazzy vibe; the drums speed up and gain an almost danceable time signature, and if not for the song's ghostly vocals, the reverie would never break.
It's still hard to think of High Expectations/Low Results as something other than a wintry blast of instrumental rock, but whether it reinforces negative stereotypes or dispels them, the disc perfectly captures the essence of a place (Canada) and a time (winter). Faunts deserve a respectful nod for the sheer accuracy of their musical imagery.

- Matthew Pollesel (10/6/2005) - Splendid Magazine