RECORD TALKBACK - Electronic Soundmaker (February 84) by Andy Darlington
Fiat Lux means 'Let there be light',
and they shed light aplenty on their first album. A sound that
shines through - according to dark-haired vocalist Steve Wright -
like "a searchlight in a sewer." If you have room in your heart
for just one more electro-pop band - make it Fiat Lux.
They don't fit easily into anyone's pre-conceptions. They never have. Getting it together in a house in the country is not what you expect from modernists, but it's a setting that's exactly right for Fiat Lux. In their Smithybrook Farm rehearsal studios, low whitewashed oak beams loom perilously close to speaker cabinets, to Ian Nelson's Jupiter 8, to microphones, David Crickmore's Memorymoog, bronze sax, Fender guitar, and assorted other instruments. We distribute ourselves around the room and listen to monitor mixes of the album over sweet coffee and a tube of 'Jammie Dodgers', the high-tech decor standing in odd - but not inappropriate - contrast to the rural setting.
"Our second single, 'Photography', drew some flack", travelogues Steve with evident amusement. "It got called turgid, critics didn't like it's slowness it seems. Other people, who never took the time, caught onto the mood of it and really liked it."
"Radio exposure is so important," asserts Ian, "and we didn't get the plays we needed. It was scheduled for a 'Round Table' one Friday. It was gradually getting nearer and nearer to the end of the programme and it hadn't been on yet. Then they played the last record and it wasn't ours. Our plugger said 'I bet I'll go in there tomorrow and they'll tell me it would've been the next one up if they'd had time'. " There's something momentarily wistful in Steve's voice as he adds "it was little things that didn't happen, like that."
All bands complain about lack of air time. It's part of the game. But for Fiat Lux it's more valid than most. Listen to their current single, the reflectively beautiful "Secrets". There's a delicacy within the dynamics of melody and harmonies that give it irresistable power. No pretentions, no art-pop cerebral frosting; they rely on the cumulative addiction of it's pure melody. Like "Photography" it's too slow to Disco launch, and too subtle for radio's approach to immediacy. It needs repetition before yielding up it's full potential - it's worth the effort, but it needs those plays to break on through to the other side.
They don't fit easily into anyone's pre-conceptions. They never have. Getting it together in a house in the country is not what you expect from modernists, but it's a setting that's exactly right for Fiat Lux. In their Smithybrook Farm rehearsal studios, low whitewashed oak beams loom perilously close to speaker cabinets, to Ian Nelson's Jupiter 8, to microphones, David Crickmore's Memorymoog, bronze sax, Fender guitar, and assorted other instruments. We distribute ourselves around the room and listen to monitor mixes of the album over sweet coffee and a tube of 'Jammie Dodgers', the high-tech decor standing in odd - but not inappropriate - contrast to the rural setting.
"Our second single, 'Photography', drew some flack", travelogues Steve with evident amusement. "It got called turgid, critics didn't like it's slowness it seems. Other people, who never took the time, caught onto the mood of it and really liked it."
"Radio exposure is so important," asserts Ian, "and we didn't get the plays we needed. It was scheduled for a 'Round Table' one Friday. It was gradually getting nearer and nearer to the end of the programme and it hadn't been on yet. Then they played the last record and it wasn't ours. Our plugger said 'I bet I'll go in there tomorrow and they'll tell me it would've been the next one up if they'd had time'. " There's something momentarily wistful in Steve's voice as he adds "it was little things that didn't happen, like that."
All bands complain about lack of air time. It's part of the game. But for Fiat Lux it's more valid than most. Listen to their current single, the reflectively beautiful "Secrets". There's a delicacy within the dynamics of melody and harmonies that give it irresistable power. No pretentions, no art-pop cerebral frosting; they rely on the cumulative addiction of it's pure melody. Like "Photography" it's too slow to Disco launch, and too subtle for radio's approach to immediacy. It needs repetition before yielding up it's full potential - it's worth the effort, but it needs those plays to break on through to the other side.
The album reveals similar slow burners. The spacious 'Embers' in particular stands out. "This song is all about leaving spaces", comments blonde Crickmore as it washes lushly around him. "Leaving a few spaces is in some ways a lot better than filling them." Drifting guitar chords float around a dramatic Scott Walker colouration, Ian's hypnotic sax weaving and dancing like wave-forms. Then 'Blue Emotions' - "the nicest Socialist song that anyone's ever heard" - which is something like Heaven 17 might sound with OMD shading. Later on there's 'The Moment', with nagging horns and intricate vocal harmonies, a slow loping acoustic guitar trim around a clean sax break; the slightly more orthodox electro-pop 'Breaking The Boundary'; and the fast funk of 'No More Proud' with it's lyrical density served up through straining vocals. Here the chromatic drum-pulse percussion falls into place like the strokes of a well-oiled guillotine drawing from a tight reservoir of power. But it's in the beauty and clarity of the slower tracks that Fiat Lux deliver, and collectively, in the album form honed and sharpened by Hugh Jones' meticulous production, there's no way they can now be overlooked.
Soft Soap
There's sufficient facial similarity to betray Ian's filial relationship to Bill Nelson. And it's an obvious critical tactic to suggest nepotism at work in the Fiat Lux debut - 'Feels Like Winter Again' - which emerged on Nelson's Cocteau label. But that single was recorded (in Leeds' Ric-Rac studios), became an 'NME Single of the Week' and went Top Three in the indie lists even before Ian had expanded the line-up to a three-piece. Crickmore and Wright have a history of prowling Yorkshire stageboards in various combinations extending back some way. At the same time that Ian Nelson was honking sax with brother Bill's Red Noise, Steve was playing in "The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari" as part of the Yorkshire Actors Company; while on the radio John Peel was playing the complex jazzy singles David was cutting with the under-rated Magnificent Everything. But it was the collaborative success of 'Feels Like Winter', and the subsequent national tour with Blancmange, that fused the Fiat Lux identity into a tight professional unit. From which the step to Polydor, 'Photography', and the album, were natural progressions.
"There's some room for hindsight," acknowledges Steve around a mouthful of Jammie Dodger. "Over the last couple of days I've listened to "Winter" again. It's great, but it seems really naive now I listen back to it. Not 'cos there's anything wrong with it, it's just maybe not how it would sound if we did it now."
"What we would've raved about six months ago now seems really uneventful," concurs David."I'm glad about that. It means were moving on all the time. If they still sounded great that would mean we weren't achieving any progression. Now we've got fairly advanced backing tracks, fairly advanced equipment, and hopefully we can come up with some fairly advanced sounds with them. In the early days the songs were slightly more basic. We were forced to rely more on the backing tapes simply because we didn't have the facility to create a lot of the synthesizer sounds we wanted. We were limited to a Casio and a sax before we had any money. "
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