~scape

scape43

		frivolous
midnight black indulgence Frivolous is a protagonist of the minimal house scene. That is his reputation. Or rather, that has been his reputation so far. Now he has transported this sound to a place where it could become of interest for a wider audience and transcend the circle of insiders who up to now were his main audience. "Midnight Black Indulgence" marks a watershed in Frivolous’ career. For the first time, influences and inspirations are clearly discernible. Moments of pure dance ecstasy are followed by string interludes or appear next to jazz ballads. The connections Frivolous makes are of a convincing, almost compelling logic. This album is everything but eclectic, Frivolous’ extremely personal music is aimed at special moments and places. "Indulgence" in the title of the album relates to the personal-nature of this music. Daniel comments: "Indulgence is a very personal thing, something that is kind of selfish, but somehow justified to ones self." And although these tracks are never pompous or serve as a display for his musical prowess, there is something risky and luxurious about them. The dense and emotional thread which he weaves through the album was developed from baroque music. Frivolous quotes Germain Bazin: “The Baroque artist longs to enter into the multiplicity of phenomena, into the flux of things in their perpetual becoming. His compositions are dynamic and open and tend to expand outside their boundaries; the forms that go to make them are associated in a single organic action and cannot be isolated from each other." "Electronic Music Composition" was the only subject which young Daniel found deeply inspiring during his school days. Suddenly, he was able to develop something from the piano lessons which hitherto had only served to discipline him that was at once challenging, intensive and enjoyable. During the mid-nineties, he discovered dance music and soon began to dj at all the relevant afterhours in Vancouver. During this time, the city’s club scene tended to be dominated by the more “obliging” US-house, which had a tendency towards vulgarity; the new European minimal sound was looked down upon by the audience as being poncy art music. Thus Daniel chose the alias Frivolous to smuggle this new sound into the clubs. Daniel: „My music started to turn really jazzy and humorous, and coincidentally the word frivolous in French means “in-appropriately playful”, like for instance the characteristic of somebody who shows up at a funeral wearing polka-dots.” At first he was hesitant to release his music. Contributions to compilations on Canadian labels gained him an early modest reputation. When he finally sent demos to five renowned German labels, three of them wanted to release his music straightaway. Since 2002, Gardner has released more than ten EPs The advanced minimal sound has bestowed electronic dance music with a new, sophisticated body. To this body, Frivolous has given a head - and also a face. While many contemporary productions lose themselves in self-absorbed and arbitrary moments, Frivolous succeeds in transforming youthful charm and abandon into a music that is neither naïve nor superficial. It seems that today’s advanced electronic music has become stuck because of its attempts at abstraction and by its formalism. Frivolous comes up with something we’ve often been promised but only now come to hear: He actually generates a feeling for song from House and Techno. At the same time, his understanding of melody and voice does not stem from a threadbare and shopworn view on 80s pop music (as so often is the case), but from jazz. In his music, jazz and “jazzyness” do not work as tacky, transfigured quotations but as snapshots full of character; impressions of feelings materialized as sound. Says Daniel: “For me Jazz means a loseness and a feeling that can only be created by humans. It is the anti-machine. Even if it is sampled, it is usually for the quality of a magical moment that can't be graphed with 0-127 on time-code." (Alexis Waltz)