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FRKTL (pronounced fractal) is the solo electronic project of audiovisual artist and experimental composer Sarah Badr. Output created through signal processing, field recording, and live instrumental sampling.
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Albums
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Posts
FRKTL — Descent
Finally, after somewhat of a hiatus following my arrival to Cairo last August, I’ve begun to knuckle down and work on the second full-length album. This will be a follow-up to Atom, which debuted almost exactly a year ago. The target release date for the new one hasn’t been set yet, but it should be sometime in the spring.
Until then, here’s a new track up on SoundCloud, with more work on the piano alongside Max for Live. Hope you enjoy, and thank you to everyone who has been so supportive on SoundCloud and elsewhere this past year — I couldn’t have done any of this without you.
Update: Really honoured to have this track featured on A Strangely Isolated Place. Thanks again to the site’s wonderful curator, Ryan!
Cairo smell,
that smell that lingers
like summer of ’94I remember
because I was on that
balcony with you,
with a gown as pale
as the pale blue sky
and the sounds of birds
rustling in trees
down belowEight stories down,
fourteen years ago.Where are you taking me
with the air that glides beneath
your unsturdy wing?A man once spoke to me
of having a lover
in every city in the worldHis was a number,
a collection of names
in cities spanning
continents for some
distance and comfortAnd I, he said,
was Cairo.Oh, Cairo
What do you mean to me?
Do you mean anything at all?I try to find the rhyme,
a rhythm to my sentiment
for a land for which
I have no pitch
no notes, no key.Only clashing colours
and turbulent sounds
bikya, bikya!
as the cars rage by
in a city awakening.We awaken to find
hot tea and hot bread,
that sweet morning cigarette
cumin-covered, oil-drizzled
a traffic jam on the
bridge of excuses.Are you leaving or coming?
For how long, why so long?Concrete bodies
with spines of smoke,
it is here where the
streets are names
of the numbers of days
in the years of a history
steeped in warAnd nameless alleys
carve rivers near a
bridge of excuses,
the numbers of a
desert drowned
by haphazardly
parked carsAnd the rest,
just numbers
of scarred children
and broken homes
in this land of
clashing canons
and turbulent smogNo wonder.
No wonder at all.I am on a road
named after a man
and his father
and his father’s father—
I am in a land with streets
of wars and men.S. Badr, August 2008
FRKTL — Tahrir
Just added the latest track onto SoundCloud. This one is a tribute to the Egyptian Revolution, as I begin to prepare for my upcoming move to Cairo. Violin, then piano, and then Omar Suleiman’s speech marking Mubarak’s ouster towards the end. A soundtrack for the weeks that spanned between the 25th of January and 11th of February, for those of us who watched it unfold from beyond Tahrir Square.
FRKTL — Fjäder
Another new track up on SoundCloud. This one is quite a bit different from most of the ones that have preceded it — stripped down and acoustic. I recorded myself playing my Ibanez Talman while singing straight into Live with a simple delay and some light reverb added for both strings and voice. This is probably the first time for me to focus as much as I have on vocals, with the exception of ‘Maqam’ (spoken word) and ‘Vitöga’ (stretched out into drones).
Hope you enjoy.
FRKTL — SCOTD
Was totally taken by surprise today when a friend shared a link from the SoundCloud page on Facebook and I realized it was actually a link to my own SoundCloud profile. A big thank you to the wonderful guys at SoundCloud for selecting me as today’s SoundClouder of the Day — really appreciate all the feedback everyone has given so far.
FRKTL — Naos
Uploaded a new track on SoundCloud today. In a month, I’ll be moving from London to Cairo to continue work on a second album. The city is rich with sounds perfect for field recording, and admittedly I’ve been distracted by everything that’s been going on there post-revolution. Looking forward to what will hopefully be an inspirational stay there, for however long.
Having recently started building my own Ableton devices with Max For Live, I was happy to see that Robert Henke had released his very own Monolake Granulator for download. This piece uses it to build on an earlier track, ‘Vitöga’, which was mostly a combination of heavy voice distortion and bowed electric guitar.
Happy Easter Everyone.
- FRKTL: Tidal
A prospering young talent with a wealth of promise judging on this track and the rest of FRKTL’s debut album. Ambient, glitch, dubstep, techno, IDM… whatever elements your hearing in there, forget about it. This wasn’t made with a genre in mind; it’s dark, twisted, epic and was made by a genuine enthusiast for electronic music with the skills to transform passion into product.
FRKTL / Spöken
From Atom
Started in January 2010, FRKTL is the solo electronic project of a twenty-five year old South London based audiovisual artist and experimental composer who creates output through signal processing, field recording, and live instrumental sampling.
« This week we feature a track by one of our old time friends and contributors, Sarah Badr. Sarah has previously written a review of Telefon Tel Aviv‘s Immolate Yourself. I knew that Sarah was a designer, artist, and a writer but I had no idea that she was also a musician, composing pieces under the moniker FRKTL. So you can imagine my surprise when I listened to her latest contribution on Sound Cloud, titled Spöken, and even bigger excitement when I totally fell in love with the track! On this piece you can hear “Cairene Street field recording and overdubbed improv on a full-size electric violin with whammy pedal.” Wow, this piece is sublime. Totally blown away by this random finding, hope you enjoy. — Headphone Commute »
soundcloud | frktl.com | sarahbadr.com
An inspired journey through eleven far sighted tracks, complemented by the five track free-to-download Atom + B-Sides companion release.
Download/Stream Atom and Atom + B-Sides from Bandcamp
Akin to Nejmano, Emmalee Crane, Longford Squire? [multer], Vultrapia, Mark Clifford, and In.
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Tweets
- Sereno Parte X Set by @lync_web — http://t.co/r9WTRW6q
- Leila, 'All Of This' — http://t.co/5AY8PQ33
- Second full-length album in the works. http://t.co/Z9yF6w9B
- New track on SoundCloud: FRKTL, 'Descent' — http://t.co/ClTciNzW
- Now playing: Zorya — http://t.co/8gSEKmbf
- The FlawlessSound 38 featuring Nicolas Jaar — http://t.co/SbgLgivS
- David Lynch, 'Strange and Unproductive Thinking' — http://t.co/0z94H9Al
- Now playing: Enjoy Your Stay At The Holograph Lounge — http://t.co/NBOppmgl
- Tasseomancy, 'Diana' — http://t.co/rTAwcNAl
- Alva Noto, 'Uni Acronym' — http://t.co/f42Uw1rX
- Liquid Stranger, 'Magenta' — http://t.co/qP8DShYo
- Subwave, 'Wheel Of Time' — http://t.co/Q4mS1AG0
- Now playing: Aftertime — http://t.co/7rlw2BKv
- Simon Pyke, 'Supreme Believers' — http://t.co/AtIzjWh0
- Now playing: Everything & Nothing — http://t.co/625GZp9A
- Onra, 'Fight Or Die' — http://t.co/H5wTO6ti
- Martyn, 'We Are You In The Future' — http://t.co/Bp0MIXMD
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