L'histoire d'un label commence souvent par l'histoire d'une passion.

Si certains (la plupart !?) succombent aux sirènes mercantiles avec plus ou moins de bonheur et un fatras de saloperies à nous fourguer dans nos esgourdes, d'autres continuent à développer leur passion malade. Three:Four ne choisi pas la facilité mais la qualité. Toutes leurs sorties sont pesées, maniérées et versées dans l'érudition. Là où c'est intéressant pour nous, consommateurs, c'est que leur champ d'action couvre de vraies découvertes ou de vraies bonnes surprises.

Arrêt sur la seconde prescription. 2 comme le nombre de groupes participants. 2 comme le fait que les 2 membres de chaque combo habitent dans 2 villes différentes. 2 comme les faces de ce 10' camé et hypnotique.

A ma face A : The Fun years (Since 2003), composé d'un guitariste sous codéine et un DJ sous influence Lynchienne.
A ma face B : .Cut feat Gibet (2003), bivouac avant-gardiste improvisé autour des Young Gods et de quelques bouteilles de vin rouge (fort, le vin). Pour avoir vu ces derniers sur scène j'y ajoute une dimension intérieure rarement vue chez ce type de formation. Le genre de groupe qui vous emporte ailleurs...

Ukhan Kizmiaz - Surchauffe Surnaturelle - mai 2010


This is a split made by The fun years & .cut & Gibet Second release in the split series from the label Three:Four. On today's menu is the theme of the groups. Both The fun years and .cut ft. Gibet are guitar/Laptop Duos. The first side of this album (who was officially released on vinyl ) offers The Fun years, Ben Recht and Isaac Sparks, while .cut ft. Gibet are Albérick and (You guessed that one right!) Gibet. On this split release, the label Three:Four manages to release a fine document of these two acts, working out their similiar instruments for different results.
I was pretty sure that the number of tracks on this split will be small, due to the time limitation that a 10" format allows. "The Fun Years" Surprised me quite a bit with no less than five tracks on their side. This small E.P of theirs has a very nice opening with "Am I having a stroke", illustrating an alien rhythm that almost sounds like an obscure attempt for conversation.
The following part – "Yellow is Misleading" brings guitar playing more to the front and let a slow drone turn the rather folkish guitar into an unsettling statement. "Icon Mockery" has a more major aura to it. Infinte spreading sound scapes allow various hints of sounds and many tiny sparkles of audio generation to paint this impressive picture.
"We might just have what you need" brings the guitar to the front again, and using the laptop music as backing artillery. At this time I begin to wonder. Maybe these five parts of the small E.P that The Fun Years brought on their side of the split are too short? Keeping the physical limitations of the format, I think that the five tracks all lose a little for their length, as the five of them vary from "pretty good" to "very good", and each of them could use few more minutes to gain further momentum. "Icon Mockery" for instance, could be played for 20 minutes straight on my speakers and I wouldn't complain. Putting aside this little drawback (as far as I see it, anyway), "The Fun Years" give an excellent array of musical visions with their half of this album and do not fail to sound interesting and moving.
.cut and Gibet's part continues with the general notion but takes it to their own specific direction. Many of the tracks I have heard that are by .cut has a certain nostalgic aura to them, be it the samples used or the sounds and mood. "Up the river Da Nang..." is, to me, a long and powerful emotional trip. More effective due to its long duration, which gives me the time to discover and identify various elements in its body. It ends in a slightly harsher tone, as the guitar almost fades and is replaced by an industrial wall of noise.
" On the next morning I woke up and realized I was only part of the factory" ends the album with another great downer. Short, again and thus I feel the same thing about it, as I wrote about the first part of the album. Nevertheless, the track unto itself is a great one, emotional and powerful.

A very good release for the label Three:Four, with both artists delivering powerful music. Another album that reminds me I should get my vinyl player fixed soon!

Oren Ben Yosef - www.heathenharvest.com - november 2009


The return of our favorite (and perhaps the only?) baritone guitar / turntable duo The Fun Years, and another record of warm warbly mystery. Wonderfully warped turntablescapes, looped and crackly and fuzzy, the baritone guitar unfurling spidery melodies while the turntables weave lush gauzy backdrops of sepia sound.
Like past Fun Years records, this one is dreamy and otherworldly, ghostly and sweetly melancholic, the guitar manages to sometimes sound just as crackly and fuzzy as the vinyl on the turntables, the two elements so perfectly intertwined. The Fun Years side builds to a lush crescendo, a warm layered, soaring ur-drone, before slipping back into a slow shimmery outro.
.CUT FEATURING GIBET are new to us, a guitar and laptop duo, who are a perfect match for the Fun Years, their sound a haunting elegy, the laptop is super subtle, adding texture and color more than glitch or bleep, gorgeous, creepy, warm and lovely, a slow building gauzy swirl over ghostly drifting guitar figures, eventually reaching a sort of soft cacophony, but even then still floating dreamily from the speakers. Super limited, only 489 copies, each one hand numbered, and unfortunately super price-y as well, not sure why, but both bands offer up sounds pretty enough that for some folks, it'll definitely be worth it.

www.aquariusrecords.org - octobre 2009


Après :Take: et White/Lichens, voici le deuxième volet de la série de splits du label franco-suisse Three:Four Records. Si l’on connaissait déjà les artistes du précédent split, ce nouveau vinyle 10" est l’occasion de faire deux découvertes, avec deux duo guitare-platines/laptop. C’est The Fun Years qui se charge de la face A avec cinq courts morceaux alors que le duo américain a pour habitude de produire de longues pièces de 7-10 minutes. Ben Recht dessine de timides nappes et drones à la guitare, tandis qu’Isaac Sparks joue des platines, produisant un magma granuleux sur Am I Having A Stroke ?. Une fois entré dans le vif du sujet, le duo cherche un équilibre fragile entre guitare et machine, optant pour une moite pénombre sur Yellow Is Misleading et la tension sur Icon Mockery avec ses denses nappes de guitares. On aura ensuite droit à des teintes plus blues-rock sur un We Might Just Have What You Need qui nous permet de retrouver les platines, produisant des boucles craquelées. Avec ses 40 secondes, We Don’t Need No Fucking Theme Songs fait figure de générique de fin, plus électronique, laissant la place aux boucles sonores. .CUT FEATURING GIBET est donc également un duo, français cette fois, mais partagé entre Lyon et Montréal où vit actuellement .cut. Hyper productifs depuis leur formation en 2003, ils sortent nombre de leur concerts en CD-R sur leur propre structure Obsolete Records. Ils nous proposent ici une pièce maîtresse avec les 10 minutes de Up The River Da Nang..., dans un registre post-rock ambient à base de guitares flottantes et bruitages de type passages d’avions, hélicoptères et autres véhicules, lointains tirs d’armes à feu, comme si le duo se produisait avec en fond de scène les images et la bande son d’un film de guerre, avec petit à petit une lente montée de la tension avec sonorités saturées. On The Next Morning I Woke Up And Realised I Was Only Part Of The Factory fera figure d’apaisement, avec guitare et delay, quelques samples vocaux pour un post-rock ambient. Un split particulièrement réussi, avec deux formations qui partagent un même univers. Conseillé aux amateurs d’expérimentations post-rock.

Fabrice Allard - Etherreal -septembre 2009


(...) The second volume pairs five short tracks by The Fun Years with two by .CUT FEATURING GIBET. Listeners familiar with The Fun Years' recent full-lengths, Life-sized Psychoses and Baby, It's Cold Inside, will know what to expect from their contribution to the split volume and they won't be disappointed: Recht's baritone guitar lines smothered in dense, heavily-textured masses generated by Sparks from eroded vinyl, manipulated found sounds, and decaying drones. On most of the tracks, Recht's guitar sounds generally blend into the overall sound mass, which makes the clear separation between guitar and accompanying sounds in “We Might Just Have What You Need” so ear-catching. Not that we'd forget necessarily but the side ends with a voice stuttering the group's name during the brief outro “We Don't Need No Fucking Theme Songs.” On the B side, the oddly-named .CUT FEATURING GIBET (formed in 2003, the group pairs Montreal resident Albérick aka .cut on laptop with Lyon-based Gibet on guitar) first plunges the listener headlong into the nightmarish “Up the River Da Nang...,” a powerful sonic evocation of the psychosis and trauma associated with the Vietnam War experience and the madness personified by Colonel Kurtz in both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now. Molten slabs of scarred guitar lines breathe fire alongside shimmering fields of tremolo guitars, with the elements melding together inseparably as the piece grows ever more violent and deranged. The duo's second piece, “On the Next Morning I Woke Up and Realized I Was Only Part of the Factory,” is less disturbing in intent and concludes the volume with a comparatively soothing stream of echoing guitar lines.

Textura - août 2009


Next a 10" by The Fun Years and Cut Featuring Gibet. The Fun Years side opens with a song with the best title i've heard all year - 'am i having a stroke?' Its the kind of thing I blurt out on a regular basis. The music is lovely cut up ambient stuff maybe a bit like The Caretaker or something. A bit like Gas. my brother played me that one yesterday and I love it. Gas. This is a bit like Gas. Flip it over and Cut Featuring Gibet (where do they get their names?) who are from Montreal and Phil correctly surmises that they sound like Godspeed before the whole of the band kick in. Nice tidy guitar ambience. Bit of La Bradford maybe. This is part of a 10" series on three:four records.

Normanrecords - juillet 2009