Can’t See The War For The Dancers is Fertanish’s first physical release since 2013. Many of the tracks on this album have evolved over four or more years – composed, shelved, visited, paused, revisited, polished, deconstructed, and then, suffocating in the smog of our year 2020, revived and mastered into an interconnected journey of reflection, chaos, and grace. Each track is diligently composed, yet contains an emotional rawness, making it the most challenging Fertanish release to date.
William Fertanish is a multi-disciplined artist, working in music, photography, sculpture, and mixed-media. When Can’t See The War For The Dancers was mastered and ready for release, he wanted to move away from the comfortable digipack delivery that he has used for over a decade to incorporate different facets of art. The multiple custom package delivery options are unique and limited, created from the Dancers art project.
Each package is described and available for purchase on Bandcamp
Each song on the album started as a complicated, multi-layered composition, then shaved of noise and instruments into the forms they were meant to be. Even the most chaotic tunes (e.g. “Harm,” “Mrs. Discomfort Is, Like, Selling Like Cider”) are a fraction of the layers of sound from where they were born.
Fertanish and Terrible At Small Talk share the same brain. While both have a foundation in chaos and experimentation, Fertanish is grounded in structure, critical composition, and meter while Terrible At Small Talk enjoys freeform improvisation polished with carefully produced sounds and instruments. The eight sculptures on Can’t See The War For The Dancers blur the boundaries of both monikers, creating a journey of interrelated, empathetic growth and decay.
Can’t See The War For The Dancers was a product of carefully sorting, reworking, and evolving hundreds of recordings, sounds, and partial compositions created over the past decade. With its release comes the time to purge the old noise; any future Fertanish & Terrible At Small Talk compositions will be born on or after October 2020.