Flo (band)
Flo 浪其各? 浪不其各? | |
|---|---|
| Promo shot c. 1999 Promo shot c. 1999 | |
| Background information | |
| Also known as | Currents? No currents? (1998–2001) |
| Origin | Ran-lang, Themiclesia |
| Genres |
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| Years active | 1998–present |
| Labels | Transverse, Optima |
| Associated acts | Blo |
| Members |
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Flo is a musical group of five, usually referred to with their stage names, formed in 1998/9. The group was founded in Themiclesia and remains based there. They produce and play music spanning several stylistic categories, and as a group as well as individually Flo's members have received critical acclaim for artistic innovation and technical virtuosity.
History
Founding
Flo was founded as Currents? No currents? in 1998 or 1999, according to different calendars. In the University of 'O-nob in which the band's members acquainted with each other, the academic year was used for non-academic purposes, hence its founding date of Nov. 1, 1998 was recorded as Nov. 1, 1999 in the university's records. The band's members have not expressed preference for one way to write the date or the other.
Despite the official founding date, the five members of the act have developed a close friendship with each other in 1994 at the latest, and Blurry Note and Early Seconds new each other since childhood. The five initially met as a group in a course on international music theory; noted for its rigour, the five confided in each other for answers and jointly worked on many projects. Sources from students in the same course noted that the five "always sat on the same bench, at the very rear of the hall". It seems the five began to write music for non-course related work, or at least for courses that they did not share, some time in 1993.
The five graduated between 1995 and 1996 and began to find employment in different musical establishments or as independent musicians, though they remained in contact with each other; when separated by physical distance, they resorted to expensive inter-regional conference calls, sometimes "racking up a $1,000-phone-bill in a single month". Kap returned 1997 from Kien-k'ang, where he worked for a recording studio as an record fixer, to seek a teaching position in his alma mater. Tumble Cream was briefly a soldier in the Music Corps, but "alcoholism" apparently constituted a major cause in his early discharge; this reason is not universally accepted, since Tumble Cream's colleagues-in-arms all agree that he did not like drinking. The two other members never left Ran-lang since graduation, and all five were back in 1998.
When Kap declined that teaching position, he suggested forming a musical act amongst themselves. Chime Crystal apparently retorted and disparaged the "doldrums" of the Themiclesian music scene, which at the time produced few remarkable bands, and most found little reason to stay domestic. Dayashinese group Zo-loz (active 1979–1992) was originally Themiclesian, but they achieved far greater fame abroad and settled in Dayashina, a decision that Flo said was "regrettable but eminently understood".
Capitalizing on Tumble Cream's experience as a conductor and Kap's experience in managing musical production, the quintet began work on their first publication in 1998. Their initial band name, Currents? No currents? was a reference to archaic Menghean inscriptions on oracle bones, which often provided answers to questions like "Rain? No rain?" and "Clouds? No clouds?" The choice of "current" in place of weather phenomena as on the original was explained as Flo's initial doubt in their future popularity, therefore naming their act as a divination question for "currents", which was homophonous with "trends" in Shinasthana.
First hits (1999–2003)
The group's first album saw release in the University's own community. Named Ceramics, It tcontained just six songs, though it received a welcome reception on campus, and the staff there quickly acquired rights to play them in public spaces. March Berry (季春楳) was voted the most popular song on the album. Mark L.N. Gam, the producer of radio programme in the region and long-time friend of the University's School of Music, invited the group to play live on air the titles they had already released, and this proved a critical moment in their transition into mainstream music scene. Word of mouth and the initial "cafeteria background music" on campus also played an indispensible part of their initial exposure and following publicity.
Though initially skeptical about "going commercial", the fact that none of the five had a stable source of income persuaded them, at the very least, to register their act as a trade name, and it was at this point that they adopted their current name in both Shinasthana and Tyrannian, since their original name contained punctuation, which at the time was not permitted as part of trade names. As is usual for Themiclesian groups then, they invited record companies to attend public concerts (called "public trials") for several weeks in a row, at their own expense. Due to limited funding, they borrowed the Quad from their school and agreed (privately) to a 0.5% commission on future revenues as compensation for using the Quad for 60 days. These funds were specified to go towards premise maintenance, a source of later dispute.
While the "public trials" were meant to assess the popularity of a musical group in a quasi-commercial environment, collecting ticket money was considered inappropriate. Tumble Cream took a slight risk by throwing a wrench into the dormitory's air ventilation motor, thereby stalling it. Stifled students were compelled to emerge onto the Quad as the concert was about to began. When the record companies' representatives arrived, they were stunned by the sheer amount of students and members of the public who turned our for the event. Such antics were not at all uncommon for new music groups to attempt, though their initial lack of funding have been assumed by the music industry to indicate that the apparent popularity could not be heavily influenced by whatever incentives the group managed to provide and was a genuine reflection of the act's popularity. When this later became public, Flo was temporarily labelled by other bands as "No air-flo".
Tours (since 2003)
Musical development
Early stylistic origins
Of the five members, Chime Crystal and Blurry Note were familiar with the "canonical" Pop music of the late 50s and 60s that flourished in Themiclesia and achieved a degree of influence abroad. These songs adopted Rock n' Roll techniques into Yellow Plum music, a particularly prevalent style itself became independent from the eponymous theatre. Into the 70s, the style waned in popularity and was criticized for "lacking in new subject matter and a didactic and inhibitive adherence to traditional forms and meters". As a result, mainstream groups of the age relied on large pools of talented songwriters and composers to produce music that would appeal to a rigidifying paradigm of music quality. Such supporting staff was unaffordable for new groups, whose creativity fell victim to that inflexibility which settled in after 1973. Though music from this era retains a cult following that appreciate its technical achievements, mainstream music critics have concluded since the late 70s large-scale, collaborative songwriting drowned out individual flare and produced songs of a "inoffensive character".
Two others, Kap and Early Seconds, each forayed into classical Casaterran music. Early Seconds had an unwavering dedication to polyphonic music from the 16th and 17th centuries, and his influence on Flo's eventual repertoire is very much highlighted. He believed that Yellow Plum itself was a polypohnic form of music, even though it was not described that way by those "in the loop"; some of his publications on the University's internal circulars bore out this argument, though it seems it generated little response, affirmatory or critical, at publication. Early Seconds later said, "All good music is polyphonic; those who reject this either underestimate the human mind or assume that their stupidity is characteristic of all humankind." Kap disagrees with him on whether appreciation of polyphony is a "matter of stupidity" and asserts that "music is intelligence-blind, but polyphony does bring additional structure and possibilities, which is scintillating when examined and pleasing when listened."
Tumble Cream is particularly enamoured with rhythm. Though noted for a distaste of Yellow Plum rhythm, critizing it as "needlessly dense" and "over-achieving in an unequivocally pejorative sense", he nevertheless acknowledges and endorses the influence it exerted on Flo's music. He re-iterated he did not like playing Yellow-Plum-inspired percussion lines at all but then accepted that "same complexity seems to bring something new to the very same music each time [one listens] to it". In 2006, he recanted his dismissive attitude and said that Yellow Plum percussion was "more structured that [he gave] it credit for, but mechanically exhausing to play". His own grandfather, an experienced musician in the genre, attested that percussion lines were originally played by three or four musicians, later condensed into a single one for mobility's sake.
Polyphony
- See also: Polyphony
In short, polyphony is a musical style that invokes multiple independent melody lines simultaneously. In the Robaque Period, composers used this style to great extent to introduce variation in texture and additional counterpoints, without resorting to multiple themes, which was one criticism they regularly levelled against their predecessors. Polyphony permits the same theme to be developed differently across several lines, which allowed the composition to retain structure and thematic without being dominated by a single line or voice. This technique is more natural in large emsembles, where different sections, playing independently, complement each other readily. For a five-member gig, however, adopting "five-voice polyphony" as the mainstay of their repretoire is "daunting and highly unusual in [their] environment", according to Kap.
Not everything that Flo wrote is strictly original, though the group claims that "no single note is carbon-copied in their musical function from another piece of music". As a quintet, each member of Flo sings an independent melody line in most of their music; however, they also change lines frequently (e.g. Blurry Note sings line 1 in bars 1 through 8, and then goes on to sing line 2 in bars 9 through 16, while Kap sings line 1 in the same interval). The reasoning for this is not certainly known, but many Flo fan groups believe this is the "magic dust" that is an integral part of their music, perhaps to ensure that they are always conceived of as a group, rather than independent singers performing together. At least two experts, on the other hand, argue that some lines go beyond their "proper singer's" vocal range, so another sings in on his behalf, in a "sort of musical, musical chairs" arrangement.
Analyses also provide that Flo's "five-voice polyphony" is only a summary of the group's musical forms. Not all songs have five independent voices at the same time, because Flo often subordinates one or more lines as harmony for other line or lines. Tumble Cream, who plays percussion, said that this is "necessary to prevent confusion when a lot is happening in a single line, and you don't want to rob that line of the attention it needs to express itself". Other analysts think that Flo maintains two-voice polyphony in counterpoint at all times, with the two or three remaining as versatile voices that could be melody, harmony, or even embellishment as the situation required. Still others think that Flo always has four- or five-voice polyphony, just with prominence variation achieved through adjustments in volume and timbre; they state that even the most simple lines in Flo's music, ones that some fans claim as purely harmonic, are in fact melodic, pointing to certain segments in those "alleged harmony lines" used as melody in other places. As one of the most extreme (and not universally acclaimed) examples of Flo's use of polyphony, their single Millennnium Messss (1999) consisted, according to some researchers, of five independent parts, each with a vocal and percussion line, totalling ten voices; Tumble Cream was seen holding three drumsticks in each hand and playing a two-layered pedalboard when Messsss was recorded. He said, "I had no idea what I was playing or a mind at peace enough to have one."
Instrumentation
According to the group's official entry in the Encyclopaedia Tyrannia, all five members are guitarists and vocalists. Tumble Cream is also percussionist. Blurry Note and Chime Crystal are keyboardists, but all five members have been seen playing a keyboard (or at least a clavier instrument) at some point. Tumble Cream has never played a guitar in official stage performances, though in studio recordings a fifth guitar part has been isolated, controversially claimed to represent Tumble Cream when no percussion was happening. Opponents criticize that this "ghost part" has no consistent characteristic and appear in places where percussion is present. Defenders of the first view countered that Tumble Cream may have played a guitar set up beside him with a spare hand, something which Tumble Cream said was "technically not possible".
Interestingly, all five Flo members have, since 2002, lived in the same apartment building and on the same storey. According to interviews of their neighbours, they are rarely seen in communal areas, though guests and staff do frequent their residences very regularly, to the chagrin of some living proximately. When asked how they composed their songs, Flo revealed with some reluctance that they do it "together bar-by-bar and on an electric organ"; when pressed for more detail, they said that they did not, as some suspected, just wrote their own lines and checked for harmonization note-for-note, but every member was putting "all his heart and mind" into "every single line". Flo later explained that to describe how they write their music would take "about as much time as to show you how to do it", which could take "at least two 40-hour weeks", because "each piece of music is different, and each represents a challenge as big and as small as [their] first song".
A usual on-stage instrumentation would feature two or three guitar-cum-vocals, a pure vocal, and percussion, and in this respect Flo is not unconventional compared to pop music groups. Nevertheless, Flo has been known to experiment with instrumentation liberally. The keyboard instrument has been swapped out for a hammered dulcimer, a Themiclesian harp, a lute, and even a xylophone. The guitars that the act used also varied from time to time. Initially, the quintet used electric guitars tuned to sound virtually identical to an acoustic one. Later, Chime Crystal started playing his "double bass", which had a comically large resonator; within a single year, he abandoned the instrument, saying it was difficult to tune and "utterly unresponsive in quick arpeggios". Exotic instruments as pipe organs also featured in several albums. Flo was especially praiseful of the pipe organ, especially its "ability to produce powerful bass, exquisite treble, and everything imaginable pitch and timbre in between".
Legacy
Tours
Band members
Blurry Note
Kljang T'ad-'lam 章泰炎 PhD | |
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| Birth name | あけひとおおほのお (Akehito Oohonoo) |
| Born | December 1, 1973 Nakazara, Dayashina |
| Genres |
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| Occupation(s) | musician, songwriter |
| Instruments | guitar, piano |
| Years active | 1998–present |
| Associated acts | Flo |
Blurry Note's personal name is Kljang T'ad-lam. He is a guitarist and vocalist in Flo, but he also plays the keyboard occasionally. He sings the alto or tenor lines.
Kap
Trjang-krjang Priom 長卿般 | |
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| Born | March 1, 1974 Mak-towng Territory, Themiclesia |
| Genres |
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| Occupation(s) | musician, songwriter |
| Instruments | singing, guitar, pedal piano, pipe organ |
| Years active | 1998–present |
| Associated acts | Flo |
Kap was born Trjang-krjang Priom. He is a guitarist, vocalist, and keyboardist. He usually sings the tenor line in vocals. He is noted for being "half-Maverican and half-Columbian", though it is not clear exactly how he is related to any Maverican or Columbian person. Kap's favourite food is whipping cream.
Early Seconds
Sronh Rjang-sgwlar 長卿般 | |
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| Born | January 2, 1974 Inner Administrative Region, Themiclesia |
| Genres |
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| Occupation(s) | musician, songwriter |
| Instruments | singing, guitar, pedal piano, recorder |
| Years active | 1998–present |
| Associated acts | Flo |
Early Seconds' real name is Sronh Rjang-sgwlar. At 6' 1" he is easily the tallest of the group, and he is a guitarist and keyboardist. He occasionally sings the bass line, but because his lines tend to be the most involved, he has fewer singing parts.
Chime Crystal
Krwan Krawg-deng 管高渟 | |
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| Born | March 30, 1976 Inner Administrative Region, Themiclesia |
| Genres |
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| Occupation(s) | musician, songwriter |
| Instruments | singing, guitar, pedal piano |
| Years active | 1998–present |
| Associated acts | Flo |
Chime Crystal is the baby of the group, being two years younger than the rest, who were all 25 when the band formed. Like Kap, he sings the tenor line and also play the guitar. In some pieces, he can be seen playing the bass or "double bass", which is a comically-sized guitar tuned an octave lower than a normal bass guitar. Blurry Note's early piano compositions have been leaked onto the Internet in 2010, prompting some to think of him as a failed concert pianist; he responded that he had no ambitions in that direction, and the "ability to play the piano is more common than the inability".
Chime Crystal, as will appear more fully below, has a prolonged feud with Dayashinese-Themiclesian musician Namae-nashi over the latter's style or "lack of acoustic common sense" according to the former. Chime Crystal later publicly jabbed at Namae-nashi's well-known substance dependence, asking why he has "not OD'd yet". Namae-nashi retorted in 2016, "Even I swear better than he, with a grammatically correct 'he' ".
Tumble Cream
Rjang Krus 梁祰 | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 10, 1974 Nom Sglak-'lju, Themiclesia |
| Genres |
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| Occupation(s) | musician, songwriter |
| Instruments | singing, drums, guitar |
| Years active | 1998–present |
| Associated acts | Flo |
Tumble Cream is the percussionist of the group. He has the fewest singing parts, though when they appear they are usually in solo. He sings the alto line, but in some passages he is known to show his upper extension into the countertenor range.
Discography
- 1998
- Album Prjang (lit. "3rd album", an unreleased album used for cafeteria playing)
- Album Deng (lit. "4th album", as above)
- 1999
- Apologies for the Music!, on CD and LP
- Music for the End of the Millennium, CD & LP
- (Actually), CD
- 2000
- Music 'till the End of the Millennium, CD
- Flo-mo, CD
- 2001
- War of Flo Against Mono, Stereo CD
- 2002
- Anthology I, LP
- Anthology II, LP
Controversy and criticism
Great West Agency
Flo initially retained the Great West Agency (大西仲介所, dadh-sner-trjungh-krêdh-skrja’) to manage their affairs while they engaged in artistic creation. The relation rarely came under public view and was assumed to be a happy one. However, in 2009, Kap threatened to kill his personal agent, who was sent by the Great West Agency to take care of Kap's quotidian requirements, such as catering and transportation; it is not uncommon for performing musicians like Kap to have a pair or more of them at any given time. On Jan. 2nd, while backstage in preparation for an evening concert, Kap became irritated after learning that his favourite guitar, being rebuilt at a workshop, would not return in time for the concernt. He charged his agent to find a replacement, but one was not forthcoming after the attendant scoured "at least 30 music supply stores" for one like Kap's, and Kap received two separate guitars tuned so that they were "functionally comparable" to his 12-string instrument. Kap became enraged and shouted, "I will roast you alive over all the firewood you bought." The agent fled from the dressing room and across the stage, with Kap in close pursuit with the two guitars. Kap hurled them at his agent, but both missed by a considerable distance. The agent promptly left the venue and shut himself in his hotel room; the concert continued despite the altercation.
Two days later, both Kap and the Great West Agency issued public letters to apologize for the "unfortunate events". The Gerat West Agency admitted that the agent failed to make sure the guitar would be available during the New Year, for which they forfeited a third of their commission (amounting to $200,400) for that night's five-hour concert. Kap apologized for his outburst and threat of violence and agreed to pay $60,000 for a three-month vacation to Hanhae that the agent had wanted to take since last year but, due to his "continued dedication to the group", was unable to. The two then appeared on an evening program and shook hands with each other. Kap said that he was "very happy and lucky that nobody was hurt" and that "his agent decided to overlook his tantrum".
Namae-nashi
In the 2013 re-mastering of their album Tumble, Tummle, Mmm! (2003), Flo included a "special features" disc in the sleeve, containing, amongst others, two songs titled "Parody 1" and "Parody 2". Both are parodies of the same song Bloody Sunrise (2012) by Dayashinese-Themiclesian rap artist Namae-nashi, whose lyrics were criticized by certain Maracaibo media groups as either partial or malicious. "Parody 1" was re-written in Flo's style and euphemistically jabbed at the media outlets for "fostering a society so perfect / engendering such peace and quiet"; however, "Parody 2", written by Chime Crystal, was far more blunty disparaging, calling the subject "unmusic". Particularly salty lines included, "Why, why, why is it a B7 chord, chord, chord here" and "1943 Maracaibo is fucking calling, they want their machine gun staccaccaccaccaccaccaccaccaccaccaccatto [sic] back". Namae-nashi, who tried to calm emotions amongst his fans, called these two a public disgrace and responded with two songs of his own in his next album published in 2014, in which he accused Kap was "a psychotic" and Chime Crystal "a paedophile". Flo has not responded or resorted to legal action.
Notes