The Flight Orchestra

The Military of Fatima

(Breathing Room)

US release date: 21 August 2006

UK release date: Unavailable

By Zach Schonfeld

cover art
 Amazon
 Lala

From Southern California comes David Wilson, AKA The Flight Orchestra, the newest in a line of laptop-wielding electronic artists strongly rooted in a fascination with “human electronic” music. (Remember Fennesz? Khonnor?) Unfortunately, the human element on The Military of Fatima arrives solely in the form of Wilson’s disarmingly vulnerable, fey vocals, often sitting atop the glitchy, paper-thin soundscapes as if tacked on as an afterthought (“Win One for the Endless Empire and the Neverending Day”, for example, a start-stop exercise in industrial noise that sums up everything irritating about the album). “How Fast the Fast Fast with Trepidation” is a rare highlight: the melody is given some room to build amid the speaker-hopping bleeps, bloops, and one-note synths that more closely resemble the warning sounds my car makes when the door’s still open. Ultimately, the short, utterly tuneless interludes only drag the album further, ensuring that The Flight Orchestra remains firmly landed.

— 4 January 2008
 
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