from Early to Born: the legacy of Faun Fables

by thornswrath 

Of all the bands and musical acts I've had the good fortune or luck to witness, none match the underlying kinetic intensity present in the township of Oakland's Faun Fables, which appeared on the scene around 1997 despite Dawn "the faun" McCarthy, the breathing lungs and beating heart of the band, having begun writing and singing some of these songs since 1994.  (That's always the year I can't help but think of both KoRn and Acid Bath: est. '94).   

2016 sees this duo, famed to the underground network of bubbling & steaming passages interlaced through a labyrinthine kingdom hidden right out in the open yet eluding detection by the forces that oppose it, continuing on like the wandering band of nomadic gypsies they appear as, on into that network of dates pinpointed into the late evening in small, scarcely attended bars and venues where only the defiant & lonely dreamers of a darker twilight may drift ashore to; our heroes in Faun Fables now release their seventh album BORN OF THE SUN:  it's nothing short of a sort of rebirth for them, but not because they ever died out or went anywhere but rather because it marks a sudden transformation of themselves into a hundred thousand times brighter magnitude, considering their three lovely young girls they have given unto the light of our Sun together, and who travel with them on their new musical tour of the United States.  The new album features songs they've been carrying with them for several years now, along with freshly seasoned items from a diverse arc of the spectrum. In some ways this album shines with such freshness, it's as if it were their new 1st album.
Yet as any fan of this troupe-de-force  already knows, you can add it to the stack of six that preceded it and it glimmers like the next perfect card in a tarot deck.

Interestingly enough (I was about to post their 2016 tour dates) -- tonight is the final night of their BORN OF THE SUN tour, check it out!

Fr 19 Berkeley, CA @ The Starry Plough
starryploughbooking@yahoo.com

**Go to http://www.faunfables.com/ for more show updates, our newsletter.. and more !

So if you're anywhere near the Berkely area -- get yourself over to the Starry Plough for a great evening of powerful music from Dawn McCarthy and Nils Frykdahl, they will be sure to please the crowd gathered regardless of how young or large, old or small.   

Below I"ve posted the seven Faun Fables album covers in order of appearance, and also the rare cassette edition of Dawn McCarthy's debut solo release,  last year's Traveller Returning.   

I've posted one song from each release, so listen to and/or watch all eight YouTube Faun Fables songs I've selected below.  They're not necessarily the best from each album--they're just what I was able to pull from YT--but regardless, they will give you an extraordinary sense of what the mysterious Faun Fables sonic webwork sounds like over the past twenty years.  

Welcome my friends, welcome to the Mountain under the Sun.

1994 ~ 1999

 

2001

2004

2006

2008

2010

2015

 

 

2016

~

Eno's THE SHIP

by  shaun lawton 

As The Ship began streaming from my PC speakers the first thing I thought of was glass. A filament beneath fogged glass. A filament beneath fogged glass lighting up slowly. The light going from warm yellow toward white and then blending through the spectrum. The glass clarifies then liquefies then disappears altogether, leaving just the light to wallow in the vacuum. Pin pricks allow echoes to flower in the darkness. Deep below decks an engine switches on, muffled by steam engines behind sound proofed glass. The lights dance through the bricks of green glass slowly as more sounds come alive.  A symphony wakes up from its coma to gradually stretch out and yawn. The Ship was sprung from a willing land. Echoes of gaseous vapors steam off the surface of a crystal sea. And there's a globe of powdered sand. We live in clothes we wore. Air bubbles elongate as they plummet and drown. The Time is still. The Sky is young. Drawn on towards the gulf of stars whispering. And we are as the undescribed. Reverberations coalesce into an uprising. A voice through a vibraphone speaks. Distant percussion keeps time. My desert in a grain of sand. My life within a day. So stew the storms that some tied. The black plague is sitting. But we are as the undefined. Reeking of the wind. Whispers begin emanating underneath the skin. Shimmering Cymbeline trapped beneath quiet ice. The sail is down the wind is gone. The sky is black with mold. A slave to hope and destiny. Illusion of control. And we are as the unrefined. The waves about us roll. Spearheaded echos of crystal arrowheads repeatedly diminish triggering smaller fishes of their reflections. Awash in ambient protocols diffused in all directions. Sonar tones arise and sink. Submersibles arrive guided by phosphorescent headlamps. Deeper we go while more voices grow, probing our innermost thoughts. Penetrating the sunken canyons in our little dreadnoughts. The spotlights search left and right, revealing all the whispers in bone. The water is more like marrow here. Our thoughts are all we own. Memories ping and rebound off the inner rubber of our skulls. The pressure stretches these interlocking seams. Even deeper we fall further into fissures transformed to trenches. Microorganisms streaming by our windshield. The vibrations of our tectonic crust. Submerged under wave after wave after wave after wave. The last gossip gradually drowns in our skulls as the final light arrives to wink completely out. 

Open Up And Bleed

review'd by yr roving reporter Thornswrath 

Music for deeply scarred people.  
Burn out my eyes.  I don't want to see. 
The things that you have are not what I need. 
If you want to understand this rock'n'roll band
I suggest familiarizing yourselves with
their very first album from 1999. 
Otherwise, you're entering into a world
that will tackle you head over heels
into a mosh-pit of bewilderment and dismay. 
Take it back to the beginning and listen.

Understand this band represents
an anthem for the champion as well as
a paean for the downtrodden, ravaged
disgraced and tortured to the point of death
laughed at and spat in the face by an outcome
that seems to disregard us in favor of chaos
transformation and pain but along the way
our empty eyes are filled with the flickering
flame of renewal and rebirth as we're urged
to fight back for every last scrap of our lives
we can still hang onto for all that its worth
and to defend as our final shred of integrity
smiling through bloodstained lips 
at your apocalypse.  

Death is my only love, we are as one.
Death is our only love, there can be no other.
Together in harmony, sister and brother
and friend alike we wear our damaged armor 
woven from the fabric of electromagnetic
energy pulsing through the plasma beating
in our hearts to the current rhythms
manifesting from the harmonic choir
of demons and angels orchestrating our lives.  

The story takes us down to where the judgment
is over because the singer's ripped himself bare
and dared to fight back at a senseless world
bent on predatory attack so we say fuck that.

If you will only hold me tight then I know
everything's gonna be alright. The message
behind every album, every song, every lyric
this band ever released is the same one
any single one of us are entitled to by birth
in this nation and on this Earth. Its the personal
freedom to be your own thing and not suffer
the judgment of others.  If they don't get
the brilliant passion and love at the heart
of this expression against the hypocrisy
of our own fellow man, then they can just
fuck off and never mind what happens 
to their sorry asses later on down the line 
when each and every one of our own 
self-fulfilled destinies comes to fruition 
based on the karma we ourselves generate.

I just want to give a holler out to the boss
and up front Story-teller for grabbing on
to the mic and not letting go until
the greatest rock and roll band in the world
(since Motorhead and the Supersuckers) 
rolled into town destroying everything
in their path taking no prisoners holding
no quarter giving no apologies just
straight up slaying it from day one 
with the core of the soul on the killing 
floor like no one's ever gone and done 
before with quite as much boldness as this
so from me and every last one of the slugs
we salute you with a Thank You and hugs.
I love this feeling don't ever let me land
I never want this to end.
Burn out our eyes. 
Slugcult Rise!



~thoRnswrAth