RESPOND SILENCE 15 TRACK NEW RELEASE NOW AVAILABLE
Hansel is the experimental musical project of Alan Fux and formerly MX Lopex (1995-2006). Hansel released their first full length release “Respond Violence” on Dtrash Records in 2003 and has subsequently released four additional albums on the same label. Most recently in 2019 with “the future is not what it used to be”.
Hansels music is a blend of digital hardcore, trip hop, IDM, breakcore, and at the heart of the songs are simple rock anthems, waltzes and lullabies. Hansel is unpredictable and has sonically exciting transitions.
Hansel formed in 1995, using a cassette 4-track and mid 90s WAV editers and MIDI sequencers, Alan and Mike spent hours experimenting with sampling, destructive wave editing, sequencing and composed hundreds of song sessions. By 1997, having combined, remixed many of these into the first ‘songs’, Hansel started performing at venues in Worcester MA.
In 2000-2003 Hansel had an explosive moment of song writing, where many music experiments began to merge into a new level of production, as Alan began to come into his own with vocalizing, less reliance on effects and the occassional JD Lindham as a third collaborator. During this time, the music for Respond_Violence and Studies were written.
In 2006 Hansel released Lorentzian Lineshaper, this time attempting to sit down and ‘write an album’ the melodies and lyrics continued to grow, but some of the chaotic production simmered down. After this album Mike ‘MX’ Lopex decided to leave the project, but at the time offered to continue to offer guidance on the music and occassional collaboration.
Since 2007, until present time, Alan Fux continues to compose, record and produce music.
HANSEL
Lorentzian Lineshaper
Label: D-Trash Records“This was a tough CD to review, and even a tougher one to listen to, which is probably why I liked it so much.”
Hansel is Alan Fux (vocals, samples, arrangements, orchestrations) and M.X. Lopex (samples, sequences, programming).
Hansel is also a clash of genres and a study of the thermodynamics of disparate sounds traversing against the grain. Pranksters and poets, Hansel is what Suicide would be today if modern computer technology was available.
Little things on the CD become the crux, like the glitchcore rendition of Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker”, or a sample of strings, which, I believe, were taken from W.A. Mozart’s “Requiem” mass on “Cypress Millwood”.
Articulated throughout the CD is the notion of a chronic collision of molecules and galaxies, best evident on the punch and duck sequence of “Hookwormz” and “The Uncertainty Principle”, but also in the “advanced technologies developed by monkeys” lyrics expressed on the latter track.
The track most resembling accessibility, “We Are Important”, collapses into the manic flyswatter infestation of “Zlotnik” and a broader pattern develops, which can only be ascertained if one is willing to sift through the chaotic data streams and listen to the many paths of sound to reach an independent conclusion.
Michael Casano