The FMs Take a “Sonic Odyssey” into Early Synth Territory

metroweekly.com:

Before forming queer synth-rock band The FMs, friends Matte Namer and Frankie Maddox Rex grew up in different parts of New York City — the former in Greenwich Village, the latter fifteen miles away in College Point, Queens.Their lives were separated by more than mere distance. “We had very different upbringings,” Namer recalls. “Very different kinds of families that we came from, a different socioeconomic status that we were part of.” And, while Rex attended an all-girls Catholic High School, Namer went to Stuyvesant High, a public college-prep school in lower Manhattan. “So, thinking back on it,” says Namer, “it’s really beautiful that we did develop such a strong bond and friendship, that we were able to come together and bond over music.”Namer and Rex also found common ground in their respective journeys coming out as transgender.

In 2016, they started The FMs, writing songs together, with Namer on vocals, guitar, bass, and synths, and Rex on vocals and guitar.

A year later the band released Machinacene Epoch, described as “an irreverent mix of 90s psychedelic-industrial grunge and dance pop.”They soon began work on their second album, recording tracks at a studio on an old ferry boat moored in the industrial canal that separates Brooklyn and Queens.

Frankie Rex would not live to see the work released.In May 2022, Rex died from a fentanyl overdose, a shocking blow that initially led Namer to consider disbanding The FMs.