50 Best Post-Rock Albums (#42) – Paste

30 Best Post-Rock Albums Of All Time (#21) – FactMag

12 Most Influential Post-Rock Albums – Louder

"Using the extended instrumental motif as a vehicle toward achieving musical nirvana, this Montreal quartet adheres to minimalist principles while stretching the boundaries of guitar/bass/drums with electronic hiss and other sound composites." – Magnet

"Fly Pan Am proceed with mounting urgency towards the main runway, before cannily refusing to take off, instead grinding to mesmerised halts amid rumbling low frequencies and dissonance." – NME

 

The debut record by Fly Pan Am consists of five long songs clocking in at over an hour of music, spread across three sides of vinyl for the LP format. Chiming, deliberate instrumental rock propelled by insistent motorik drumming and interweaving guitar and bass lines that unfold with obstinate rigour. The band’s ear for melody and approach to (de)construction reveal the twin influences of French pop and krautrock, resulting in a forward-looking experimentalism guided by an unshakeable faith in the unfulfilled possibilities of minimalism and musique concrete in punk-rock. Additional tape manipulations and field recordings by all the group members add drones, transitional accents, and abrupt interruptions to the collage. The music is sometimes willfully infuriating in its pursuit of a concept; “Dans Ses Cheveux Soixante Circuits” proceeds through a lovely series of harmonic changes before settling into a 10-minute repetition of a half-tone interval while the digitalia of guest electronic musician Alexandre St-Onge takes over. The band premiered this piece at Constellation’s Musique Fragile concert series in 1998, and “L’espace au sol…” is a re-recorded version of a piece that first appeared on a split seven-inch with Godspeed You! Black Emperor, put out by local fanzine aMAZEzine, also in 1998.

 

  

LP comes in a thick paperboard jacket with credits insert.

CD comes in a custom paperboard mini-gatefold jacket with a printed CD dust sleeve.

Jonathan Parant: guitar, tapes
Felix Morel: drums, tapes
Roger Tellier-Craig: guitar, tapes
J.S. Truchy: bass, tapes
 

FEATURED GUESTS

Alexandre St-Onge: electronics on Track 3
Kara Lacy: voice on Tracks 4, 5
Norsola Johnson: voice on Tracks 4, 5


Recorded at Mom and Pop Sounds in Montreal by Ian Ilavsky with Kirk Wight, spring 1999.
Mixed by Ian Ilavsky and Fly Pan Am.
Mastered by Andrew Frank, Larry Cassini and Harris Newman.