The FMOL Trio is an electronic free improvisation group, which takes its name from the FMOL virtual digital instrument, developed in 1997 by one of its members. It has been formed in 1999, by Pelayo F. Arrizabalaga (alto sax, bass clarinet and scratch turntables), Cristina Casanova (FMOL) and Sergi Jordà (FMOL and QWERTYCaster guitar), as a fusion of the former improvisation duos held by Casanova and Jordà, and Arrizabalaga and Jordà, respectively. Combining the unique sounds (and visualizations) of the FMOL, with Arrizabalaga's power blowing, the trio creates an astonishing free music of difficult classification, with possible links to Eric Dolphy or Alber Ayler, Xenakis electronic works, illbient, japanese noisemakers, New York's No Wave or Miles' Agartha period.
The FMOL (Faust Music On Line) software synth, was developed by Sergi Jordà and Toni Aguilar when the Catalan theater group La Fura dels Baus, proposed Jordà the creation of a collective virtual musical instrument for the Internet. "We don't want MIDI music. We don't want notes, we want sound. We don't want keyboardists, we want sound sculptors. We won't demand the composers more gear than an Internet connection and a 100$ multimedia soundcard. Music will be composed in real-time with the mouse, and composers will be able to modify, process or distort previous compositions." Those were the basics of a project which, during the spring of 1998, was used by more than a hundred composers around the world for creating part of the music for la Fura's play, Faust 3.0, and was awarded that same year as best multimedia application at the Bourges 3rd International Musical Software Competition (http://www.gmed.fr). One of the software major peculiarities is that its interface, which stands somewhere between a virtual harp and an oscilloscope, allows the music to be visualized while being played.
While la Fura's Faust is still touring worldwide, and after Jordà produced an FMOL CD which remixes hundreds of these Internet contributions, he and Casanova (one of the remixers on the CD) formed the audiovisual improvisation duo (using two computers and two data projectors), now powerfully enriched with Arrizabalaga's saxes, clarinets and scratches.

www.arrakis.es/~ccs/hazardrecords/artists/fmoltrio.htm

FMOL Trio:

• Live at Metrònom (CD, Hazard Records, 2000)
• Night in the Chapel (CD, Hazard Records, 2002)
• The Köln Concert (CD, Hazard Records, 2002)

La Fura dels Baus - Sergi Jordà:

• Faust 3.0 / FMOL (CD, Sgae, 1998)
  

Noise (excerpt)

Density II (excerpt)