Hop-Frog's Fatwa - The Silk Road

"Music for Minefields (and the children who play in them)" The Silk Road is the first project from the musical collective hop-frog.  This work was recorded under the name hop-frog’s fatwa, a project intended as a guerilla action against the upbeat, positive, and highly overproduced “World Music” of late, yet retaining the members’ passion for musical traditions of various cultures.  The album is set in an alternate near-future in which the characters find themselves on an endless journey along an ancient silk trade route.  Many obstacles and states of mind are experienced, including encounters with countless mutant variants of the next generations of “smart” mines and their victims.  It is a barren wasteland in the East where artists deemed “decadent” are banished to, able to survive by taking jobs such as clearing minefields by hand.  This is a metaphor for the treatment of artists in a society dominated by corporate totalitarianism, as well as cultural blandness and unchecked materialism.  It is also ironic since artists have been forced to flee from the same region by oppressive forces in recent times.  The journey along the Silk Road is an examination of the creative process.  The characters are finally able to see the world with pharmaceutical-free clarity, and are able to endure the creative process with all its explosive pitfalls and rewards.


"Middle eastern sound sources, like tabla, make this a really rich experience. But, while some of the songs have a middle eastern slant with chanting vocals and flavor, this is a much more experimental release. Weird sounds are warped from their instruments over the middle eastern tracks, and other tracks are just sound manipulations in a trance-inducing manner. A beat with reverb and delay permeates many tracks. Of course, I think of Musimgauze from the use of similar instruments, but this is far more artful and interesting. Where Muslimgauze would pummel you with repetition, each track evolves and has motion and change with Hop-Frog. Less dancey and less distortion, with far more effort and ideas, as well. This is music for the smokey hash bars of Morocco, tweak out and forget you are on earth. Challenging and interesting."(Don Poe)

Listen here.