Fievel Is Glauque, includes members Zach Phillips (US), singer Ma Clément (Belgium), and a rotating cast of musicians spread out across the globe recently they released their debut full-length Flaming Swords via MATH Interactive. Fievel Is Glauque just finished off a North American tour with Stereolab. Today, the band shares their video for lead single “Save The Phenomenon” directed by Ross Burlingame.

Zach Phillips and Ma Clément met while Zach was staying in Brussels, Belgium, where a mutual friend connected them in a bid to convince Zach to make an album during his stay there. While on route to meet, Zach hit his head on a street pole and was in need of care. As a sign of fate, Ma was also a trained nurse and was able to help clear him of any severe consequences of concussion. After a short practice the following day, the two fell into working together and gradually found themselves in a years-long musical partnership.

During the pandemic, Zach moved to Brussels to focus on the band and the two released the mono live compilation God’s Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess. Whereas that compilation was primarily composed of Zach’s writing, Flaming Swords sees Phillips and Clément working together as a composing duo. Adapting to a strongly enforced curfew and limited social contact, the two focused heavily on the writing of Flaming Swords over the next few months. Lyrically switching between English and Ma’s native tongue of French, the lyrics are created in an unusual process involving psychoanalytic dialectic, automatic writing, and interlinguistic translation of apparent gibberish. “Musically, Ma directed melodic impetus and I directed harmonic and rhythmic framing. Lyrically, we fought and embraced our initial impulses alternatingly; above all, we tried to trust and document the psychodynamics of the process itself rather than attempting to express concrete, prefab emotional or intellectual messaging. This approach to writing is intended to promote poetry while avoiding alibis and the hall-of-mirrors reproduction of excessive self-identification,” Zach comments. Just before Zach returned to the US to resume living in Brooklyn, he and Ma put together a septet and Flaming Swords was recorded live in its entirety over the evening of August 29th, 2021.

Fievel Is Glauque
Flaming Swords
MATH Interactive
Tracklist

1. Flaming Swords
2. Save the Phenomenon
3. Nos Embranchments
4. Days of Pleasure
5. My Rebel
6. Little Bad Miracle
7. I’m a Place
8. Less to Be
9. Porn of Love
10. Boîte à Serpents
11. Paging Agent Starling
12. 4000 Rooms
13. Constantly Rare
14. Wrong Item
15. One Hope
16. The Trick
17. To Be Gone
18. Clues Not to Read

Ma Clément: singing
Anatole Damien: guitar; bass on 2, 8, 16, 18
Raphaël Desmarets: bass; guitar on 2, 8, 16, 18
Johannes Eimermacher: alto saxophone
Eric Kinny: pedal steel
Zach Phillips: rhodes, piano
Gaspard Sicx: drums
all songs written by Zach Phillips & Ma Clément except:
“Paging Agent Starling”: written by Quentin Moore
“I’m a Place” & “To Be Gone”: written by Zach Phillips
mixed by Ryan Power
mastered by Joe LaPorta

Order Flaming Sword by Fievel Is Glauque HERE