Frederik Croene – F.C. Me Fecit

• Medium: vinyl record
• Year: 2015
• Client: B.A.A.D.M.
• In collaboration with: Mathieu Serruys

Edition of 300 copies. 

The recit­ing of vows, the exchange of rings, the nup­tial bless­ing: the Catholic rite of mar­riage cen­ters around well-struc­tured pas­sages of a sacra­men­tal nature. When Frederik Croene was asked to rethink the musi­cal set­tings for a wed­ding mass of a cou­ple of friends, he got intrigued by the chal­lenge of play­ing the Van Peteghem organ at St. Peter’s Church in Gent. The fam­ily of its cre­ator Pierre Van Peteghem was famous in the Romantic period for their exquis­ite organ con­struc­tions. It was not the first time Croene made improper use of tra­di­tional instru­ments: for his album ​‘Le Piano Démécanisée’ (AudioMER, 2010) he turned to the frame of a piano, nav­i­gat­ing between the clas­si­cal reper­toire and rad­i­cal decon­struc­tion of the musi­cal idiom. With Timo Van Luijk (aka Af Ursin) he released ​‘Voile au Vent’ (La Scie Dorée, 2009), cre­at­ing a haunted cos­mos of clas­si­cal instru­ments pushed to the edge. Impressed by Croene’s explo­ration of the Van Peteghem organ, we invited him to return to this mas­sive instru­ment for a record­ing of his bat­tle with the reg­is­ters of pipes and ped­als. ​‘F.C. Me Fecit’ is the result of hours of vari­a­tions high up in the organ loft of the St. Peter’s Church. Recorded dur­ing stormy weather, this album reflects the dif­fer­ent moods instilled by the idea of an eter­nal alliance between peo­ple. Alternately con­nect­ing and dis­con­nect­ing with the organ, Croene’s pol­luted chords unfold a world of archaic aes­thet­ics and roman­tic ambi­gu­ity. In the split uni­verse of both album sides of ​‘F.C. Me Fecit’ (a delib­er­ate wink to artis­tic mas­tery), Croene tames the organ and puts you under its spell.