The eMusic Dozen: Fax

The first real jewel in the Fax catalogue was Pete Namlook's co-production with Dr. Atmo, aka Tehran-born Frankfurt resident Amir Abadi. "Omid/Hope" launches the trip with the portentousness of a Wagner overture, but on the central pair of long cuts, Silence evokes the suffocating stillness of Middle Eastern temple courtyard, with the passage of time only marked by the slow movement of shadows across a tiled floor. Subtle zarb percussion embellishes the glinting, finger-on-glass vocal line in "Garden Of Dreams," while "Santur" features the indigenous zither of the title as well as a ghosting of Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn-style vocal sample. If the final "Trip" veers a little too far into a generic ambience that locks it in time, it just manages to keep a full-on analogue bubblebath at bay.

Galactic tides of white noise usher in an expansive trip from Namlook with the UK's silver-suited Ambient space cadet, Mixmaster Morris, whose eclectic DJing graced many a comedown party at the time. If Dreamfish now feels anchored in its era, it's still one of the best surviving examples of a moment when new Ambient lived a utopian dream of a technologically enlightened borderless society, sharing immersive virtual experiences around the world wide web's global campfire. There's a minty freshness and optimism about "School Of Fish," while the shorter (nine minute) "Fishology" features the synthetically treated voice of Terrence McKenna, Hawaii-based futurologist and author of Food of the Gods, whose shamanistic theories of techno-paganism and extraterrestrial ancestry fit right in with the stew of ideas and New Age psychedelics which fertilised much of the early '90s Ambient scene.

Drawing largely on the windswept sci-fi soundworld of the EMS Synthi E b, 2350 Broadway styles itself as "the soundtrack to a city unworthy for human being," and was made over a two-day stint at the historic hotel located at that New York address. Inoue helps Namlook usher in a vastly broadened range of sound: the half-hour "Raga" takes several unexpected turns, emerging from an echo-maze of electronic hi-hats into an abrasive industrial drone. Listening to "Hands of Light," in eight parts, one senses the creative alienation of the two musicians, summoning this off-world music while observing the scurrying humanity far below their lofty Manhattan perch.
As well as 2350 Broadway 2, Inoue's solo Fax album Ambiant Otaku (both from 1994) are well worth checking out.

Named after the London district where EMS was based, the Putney (aka VCS-3), with its 'open book' design, was favored by Eno, Jarre and David Vorhaus among others. With Ludwig Rehberg, Namlook creates a fantasia for the Putney's circuits, from the efflorescing supernovas of "Angel Circle" to the zero-grav nosebleed techno of "Putney Dust," to the squelchy starbursts of "Amourette." This choice is the best pick of their five collaborations. Between 1994-2005, Namlook also indulged his Moog fetish over ten albums with Tangerine Dream/Ash Ra Tempel founder Klaus Schulze. Volume 2 is the recommended entrance point. Playfully referencing the early '70s abstract odysseys of Pink Floyd, the 12-movement "A Saucerful of Ambience" throws a clangourous cathedral bell, insectoid chitterings and occasional 4/4 beats into its slow-roasting mix.

1993 saw the first Namlook release, inaugurating one Fax label strand that so far stands at over 20. It's dangerous to categorise each of the label's many separate projects, but certainly the early editions of this series saw Kuhlmann getting to grips with longform Ambient composition in ways that now sound pretty dated and generic. Only on IV -- a long piece called "Power Supply" in nine five-minute sections -- did he really get into his stride. An industrial wind moans throughout the first movements before the cogs of a chunky rhythmic motif start turning on "3," and remain revolving on and off until it's finally freighted with giant pulsating Acid tendrils on "9." Of the rest of the series, the "Subharmonic Interference" of Namlook VII stands up particularly well.

Namlook's five-CD Air project is probably his most successful solo series, one in which he seems to break out of the mechanical confines of his electronic instruments to let in organic, fluid elements. The first Air hits one of the highest notes of the entire Fax catalogue. It launches with "Wind," a twisting electronic drone whose echoing windchimes lend it a looming menace; "1st Impression" follows with a seed-pod shuffle. The album also boasts above-average Ambient drones in "Spiritual Invocation" and "Mystical Appearance," but it's "Je Suis Triste Et Seul Ici" that's the real killer here: an electronic lament that skips tentatively on jazz-light drumming, with bells and ethereal voices piped in from the cloisters of some remote French monastery.

With veteran New York producer Bill Laswell acting as godfather to a host of genre-dissolving Ambient activity in the middle '90s, it was inevitable his path would cross with Namlook's. Outland's massive compositional arc explores the complexities of the overtone; the weird resonances of throat-singing, sourced in the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator, are picked up by Laswell's filtered bass and rolled into an hour-long beatless epic. Transitions between sections are masterfully handled by these two magicians of the mixing desk: the piece opens and closes with Mongolian vocals, oriented around a heavily-processed, pure electronic core. While 'Trance' was becoming 1994's buzzword for a kind of ignorant nightclub flirtation with Eastern trappings, Outland genuinely sounded like an out-of-body experience. The duo's Psychonavigation, recorded the same year, is an equally engrossing venture into darker dub zones.

Slinky solo piece by Frankfurt producer Uwe Schmidt, a man of many aliases, the best known being Atom Heart and Senor Coconut. This one-off is one of the least known albums in Schmidt's giant discography, but its saucy ambience and sensual drum machine intercourse rank among his finest moments. "Funkified Female" is featherlight electronic belly dance; the pummeling proto-Minimal bleep of "Difference Engine" weighs in with all LFOs blazing; while "Home Sweet Home" sounds like a complex clockwork device crosswired through an arpeggiator. There's more abstraction on the curiously titled "Rather Bent Than Shaked," "Plenty of Food" and the paired tracks "White Hole 1" and "2", but the rhythmic experimentation on most of Softcore make this probably the funkiest Fax disc of all.

Rob Gordon was a co-founder of the UK's Warp Records, onetime whizz-kid employee of Sheffield's FON Studios and creator of Forgemasters' mighty underground "Track With No Name." Recorded during his mid-90s freefall from an acrimonious split with Warp, Ozoona is one of the only surviving longform examples of Gordon's mercurial art, and therefore represents something of a coup for Fax. "She Ship" is an elegant, urbane update on 'bleep' techno, while "Flat Pack"'s Moog input suggests this track is Namlook's main contribution to the CD. The 17-minute "Blackbird Suite" is a loose, swinging take on 'intelligent' drum 'n' bass that sounds like a band of cybernetic jazz virtuosi. But "The Hunt" raises the bar entirely: a manic, monotonous grey slew of compressed Hardcore breaks that's rarely been outrun, even by the likes of Autechre in their more jackhammering moments.

Another pairing-off with a UK artist, this time Birmingham's Bobby Bird, aka Higher Intelligence Agency. A theme of UFO worship -- must-have cult badge of the Ambient set -- courses through many Fax releases, and SHADO titles like "Intruder Detector," "Space Interceptors" and "Maintaining Scan for UFOs" provide the context for the duo's vacuum-sealed digital probings here. "Intruder Detector"'s cosmic reggae suggests the prophetic 'Zion dub' of William Gibson's Neuromancer. The robotic rhythm of "Space Interceptors" calibrates itself gingerly, like a cyborg performing open heart surgery, while the electro-dub of "Skydiver" suggests a moon-suited 808 State. The scintillating percussion filtering of "Maintaining Scan..." acts as a nimble directional thruster, as woozy blips twitters and squeak like sweeps on a detector dial.

"Burning with the Fires of Ork..." William Blake's visionary words, routed via Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner, form the basis for Namlook's first collaboration with Norwegian musician Geir Jenssen, aka the prolific Techno/electronica artist Biosphere. Jenssen is adept at making abstract music of paranoid intensity, and the claustrophobic percussion matrix on the opening, title track (reprised again as the album's final track) is a perfect foil for the prophetic menace in the text. "Gebirge" is a highly strung, beatless workout complete with velvet, hypnotic German monologue, whose subdued mood implies some impending cataclysm, while "The Facts of Life" could be the soundtrack for an alien soft porn flick. Set against the sustained tension of these five tracks, the relaxed Ambient expanses of early 90s Fax have been left far behind.

Namlook goes back a long way with Move D (aka David Moufang, founder of the Heidelberg based Source Records label) -- all the way to 1995's Jambient, made by the pair under the name Koolfang. On their 12th face-off in as many years since, Moufang again adds his distinctive streamline drum patterns to Namlook's textural pot, on three pieces averaging 25 minutes each. Halfway through "Unrealized Realities," the drifting, disconnected elements finally gear up, plug in and rock out to a Neu!-style engine riff. "Felice" showcases some delightful improv keyboard work, rejoicing in the warm glow of overdriven electric pianos. "Millions Of Exits" winds the pace down over dialogue sampled from TV sci-fi series Farscape. The fax machine might not be the cutting edge communication tool it used to be, but the label that borrowed its name continues its mission as the first decade of the 21st century approaches its end.