Track By Track -FRIVOLOUS

 
Music
From British Columbia via Berlin, Frivolous (aka Daniel Gardner) has had a unique and intense musical journey. Frivolous became inspired by the European minimal explosion before going on to establish his own signature sound. Now back in his natural Canadian habitat, Frivolous is releasing ‘Lost & Forgotten‘ which acts as a musical look at the places he’s been and the man behind the mask. The man himself talks us through the sounds of the album.
1. Insignificant Others (circa 2009) – This was going to be the opening track for a totally whacko pop side-project that will never see the light of day. I was going through a phase where I really hated almost everything that I heard. Berlin minimal was at it’s pinnacle, and producers were really fundamental about being dry and boring. I had recorded a full album’s worth of this stuff that was somewhere between ninja-tune meets folk-pop with a hint of house music. It was very melodic and eccentric; banjo and trumpet parts mixed with samples from Sesame Street etc. Maybe if a volume 2 of Lost & Forgotten is ever released, I’ll focus more on the singer-song-writer side of my un-released back-catalogue. There is a LOT of that stuff that didn’t go on this record, because the label and I wanted to have the dance-floor material in mind and consider doing a Volume 2 later on.  
2. Far From This World (circa 2008) – This was a piece recorded BEFORE the great dis-enchantment. I probably would have deleted it completely since I wasn’t so happy with the production on it, but in the end I used it one afternoon to explore the video editing capabilities of Ableton Live. I found an amazing Soviet-era cartoon that I used as source material and this track as the sound-track, and posted it on Youtube. Slowly people started to share it and really like it, and it’s funny how other people’s acceptance of your ideas can affect your own perspective on things. In the end I released it here solely by the request of these people. 
3. Bat’s At Twilight (circa 2008) – This is the only track that was previously released. It came out on a super microscopic label out of Portugal called 30 Porumalinha, which only ever had the one release. Somehow it feels like one of the most quintessentially “Frivolous” tracks on the record. 
4. Love Is My Business (circa 2012) – The most recent production on the record. Somewhere in the craziness of the ‘Meteorology’ tour, I actually found the time to produce one or two tracks. You can hear the influence of my tour schedule for Cadenza on this cut. It’s about as “no-holding-back” as I get and seems to always thrill a drunk dance-floor in the middle of my live-sets. Still, I like this one a lot, so it shows that I truly have a bit of that party-boy spirit in me despite what I may say. 
5. Wendy (circa 2005) – This one is probably my favorite from this record. It captures the innocence and energy I had when I was younger and testifies to just how damn “In-Love” I was with house music. Made when I first moved to Berlin with my equally bright-eyed and bushy-tailed bud David Ben Porat on trombone, it’s better-late-than-never release really liberates me and makes me feels like I can go anywhere now as a producer now.
6. Dark FM (circa 2007) – HA! Here is another track that was supposed to be on the pop-side-project album. I used to make such silly music. If I recall correctly, this was the track that didn’t fit anywhere else onto a 12″ and spear-headed the idea to record an entire album of such material. As I said the rest of the tracks on the album were either singer-song-writer stuff or else epic-folk-break tracks!
7. Rise Up (circa 2011) – Originally called “Rise-up Russia” and made during the brief time of political uprising in the end of 2011 when Putin announced he would “swap jobs” with Medvedev at the end of his term. This track was definitely another one that was hugely influenced by the sudden rise in my popularity due to the record with Cadenza. I felt like I could only disappoint if I made anything less pungent than full-on dance-floor tunes, which is ironic considering that the original name-sake was for the people who were standing up for a cause that was impossible to win. At the last minute I dumped the “Russia” part because the vocals weren’t Russian and I was getting flack on Soundcloud from my fans in Russia – my god! 
8. 303D (circa 2004) – The earliest track on the record. I was definitely reluctant to release this one since the whole idea of making a fictional video-game sound-tracks had been done enough in the past. It’s sound is full on campy with it’s 8-bit sound effects, but the energy and visual story-telling won me over in the end. It’s a time-capsule piece about my “I don’t give a shit” attitude back in the day, and to release that now is so incredibly liberating that it just has to be done.
9. App – 24 Hour Studio People [Frivolous Remix] (circa 2010) – I have a habit of bringing out the aforementioned “I Don’t Give A Shit” attitude in the most in-appropriate times. Usually when hired to do remixes. People always ask me for a remix with a certain expectation in mind, and I just can’t help but deliver something way off that mark. It’s bad because I’ll spend a lot of time on these tracks and in the end they’ll never get released. Here’s the perfect example. From now-on I think I need to be very selective with the remixes I agree to do, but luckily the guys from APP said it would be cool to cap off ‘Lost & Forgotten’ with this remix that never made it out into the world. It’s classic “Frivolous” and the perfect punctuation with which to end this album. 

Lost & Forgotten will be released by Lessizmore on 28th January. Keep yourself up to date with Frivolous’ Facebook page.