James Fonda: Ghost Town Blues
Christian Aregger (Blind Butcher) releases second single “Ghost Town Blues” in advance of his eponymous album as James Fonda.
"I feel like a Renaissance oil painter," says James Fonda of his attempt to combine digital and analog music. The result is light-footed, flowing songs about the selfie craze and self-dissolution in the cloud. James Fonda's first self-titled album pushes the boundaries naturally given to an "analog native", setting dreams and fantasies free.
For a month, Christian Aregger wrote and produced a new song every day, with the aim of freeing himself from all musical clichés and listening only to his own feelings. Especially important for this was the combination of the analog with the digital. Thematically, too, digital age takes an important role for the pre-digital native: Between self-optimization, self-presentation and the post-humanistic, fragmented existence in the cloud, James Fonda tries to find his way. I have a phone upon my face / Remembering chats and crazy cats and gaps / Between my picture and myself.
On stage, James Fonda strides through time and space on a treadmill: exploring new universes, creative expression without limits, unafraid of weirdness, defying the perfectly polished image of the modern artist. Everything is recorded, programmed, sung, but not lyricized: The lyrics of the nine songs are all written by the freelance Lucerne author and theatermaker Christoph Fellmann.
The first advance single "Idiot Elvis" manages the balancing act between past and future brilliantly: A cool, subtle drum machine groove with breezy acoustic guitar, quaint synths and a capella interludes. In between, James Fonda performs his treadmill moves like a Seventies cowboy in a desert landscape on the moon, where nothing reminds of the modern civilization that had been there at some point.
"Ghost Town Blues", another song release from "James Fonda" is an atmospheric song with fine guitars, airy percussion and surprising vocoder harmonies. What begins with an idyllic intro slowly mutates into the absurd as James Fonda sings over Touareg rock grooves in an overdriven performer's voice at the end: Without you in a whiteout room / I shout out loud / in a wingsuit on the horizon. Madness as a performative element.
James Fonda is a refreshing project from a seasoned and intrepid musician with a lot of wit, playfulness, and necessary levity in a complicated world.
Have a listen and connect with James Fonda:
