Ex-Debacle Fest operative Samantha Fonteyne-Crescioni and husband Frankie: supporting the local underground electronic music scene while fighting a litany of health issues.
Ex-Debacle Fest operative Samantha Fonteyne-Crescioni and husband Frankie: supporting the local underground electronic music scene while fighting a litany of health issues.

For the last five years or so, Samantha Fonteyne-Crescioni has been an enthusiastic supporter and key figure in some of Seattle's most interesting experimental- and electronic-music events, working as event coordinator for Debacle Fest and the hardware-based, mutant-dance monthly MOTOR. To those endeavors she's devoted her boundless positive energy, curatorial acumen, and logistical skills to help foster some of the most memorable nights in this city's underground-music scene.

However, health issues have sidelined Fonteyne-Crescioni in the last couple of years, preventing her from holding steady employment and from contributing to Seattle's nightlife in the prodigious manner to which we had become accustomed. Her numerous physical and mental ailments include an impaired immune system, arthritis, chronic fatigue, headaches, myalgia, Raynaud’s syndrome, PTSD, and depression that require, she says, "continuous physical therapy, chiropractic care, massage therapy, and yoga at home to manage pain and stress," as well as psychiatric meds and counseling with a therapist. In addition, she has been dealing with tick-borne infections. Because the U.S. healthcare system can bankrupt an individual with merely one or two major conditions, this situation obviously has put Fonteyne-Crescioni in a financial bind.

To help her deal with mounting medical costs, Denver/Minneapolis-based Always Human Tapes has released a benefit cassette, But You Don't Look Sick (also available as a download). It contains 12 tracks from mostly Pacific Northwest and California producers working at the darker end of the electronic-music spectrum.

The pieces by Timm Mason, Patricia Wolf (Soft Metals), Cruel Diagonals (Megan Mitchell), 'sighup' (Bobby Azarbayejani), Bloom Offering (Nicole Carr), T (Daisy Heroin's Colin Dawson), Bardo:Basho (Kirsten Thom), Bankie Phones (Samantha's husband, Frankie Crescioni), and others delve into disturbing moods and are sheathed in alternately abrasive and oneiric textures—sometimes both. But You Don't Look Sick offers a snapshot of a vital coterie of solo practitioners who've united to help one of Seattle's brightest lights, whose behind-the-scenes work and dance-floor brio have enriched this town's culture immeasurably.

You can obtain But You Don't Look Sick here.