Most music lovers agree there's something satisfying about hearing a band you like in the developmental stages of its career. Unfettered by the burgeoning expectations of their fans and, most vitally, themselves, the baby steps of a new musical project are often at their most powerful with reflection, when you locate how early records helped build a band's character-- think, for example, of Sonic Youth's Confusion Is Sex, Pink Floyd's Outtakes From Outer Space, or Touch and Go's compilation of the Jesus Lizard's early recordings, Head/Pure. While early material may not be the highlight of a group's discography, it's here that listeners often find their boldest, most uncompromising, and experimental work. It is the charm of a new beginning, the first marks on a blank canvas.
This is acknowledged by Fridge bass player turned solo artist Adem Ilhan in the evocative liner notes to Early Output 1996-1998: "(We were) trying to make music that didn't sound like anything else; all of us not quite skilled enough to translate the sound in our head onto cassette, but creatively filling the gaps, using them and making them integral." This pretty much sums up the appeal of this collection of Fridge's rare early releases on Trevor Jackson's now-disbanded Output Recordings imprint. Paired with six previously unreleased tracks, Early Output 1996-1998 is the sound of a young band holed up in a south London basement with limited gear, finding itself through extended improvisations and trial-and-error composition. While the material doesn't match up to their finest album, Happiness (2001), it's interesting to hear what the English post-rock trio were up to and influenced by while bands such as Tortoise and Do Make Say Think were experimenting in a similar field on the other side of the pond.
Comprising Four Tet's Kieran Hebden, Ilhan, and drummer Sam Jeffers, Fridge are known for bringing color to their brilliant, rhythm focused experimental rock with heavy sampling, a predilection that really came into the foreground around the release of their third album, Eph. The building blocks of their initial sample dabbling are evident here though, creeping stealthily in and out of songs such as "Helicopter" and the thorny assault of distortion on "Cassette".
Although Early Output 1996-1998 is more of a thoroughly enjoyable thought piece for Fridge/Four Tet/Adem fans rather than a solid introduction to the group's work, the 21 tracks on offer, which are arranged in chronological order, show an incredible musical range for a largely self-taught band whose members were barely out of their teens. On ambient, bass-anchored songs like "Zedex Ay Ti Wan" and the 15-minute krautrock freak-out "Anglepoised" the trio sound like they're channeling Can, yet a little later their sound is drenched in robotic funk on "For Force", and towards the end the listener is led through a sonic jungle of grunge influenced power chords on "Swerve and Spin", plus a spat of tracks that run just shy of a minute and consist purely of gnarly feedback.
The greatest pleasure of Early Output 1996-1998 is hearing just how much Fridge are enjoying themselves as they confront their technical limitations, take the bull by the horns, and set out on the path that led to the members' impressively innovative careers both in Fridge and their respective solo projects. It's patchy at times, as one would expect, but feeds on the fire of youth and the result is passionate and elegantly playful.
