The band "maintained utmost secrecy from the start",[3] working under aliases and disguising their faces during recorded shows, including KCRW radio's Morning Becomes Eclectic program[4] and the 2009 South by Southwest festival.[5]
The cover art for their first album, Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune's Made, release in 2009, features silhouettes, and music videos replace band members with actors and animation, such as the video of the song "No Wedding Cake" where band members appear as animals.
In 2010, the band released Part II: The New December, described by the Los Angeles Times as "screwball pastiche pop [that] sounds like an algebra problem but feels like a come-on."[6] Sinosa Loa joined the group at this time as keyboardist and vocalist, although the band favored group vocals and shared lead duties among most members. They toured throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe with other American bands, including Liars, !!!, and The Apples in Stereo.
The band's third album was released March 19, 2013, on the Asthmatic Kitty label.[7] The music is in a style the band calls "Opera-House", which they describe as "beat-driven electronica with grand, operatic gestures and lyrically-dense storytelling."[8] In a departure from their previous use of multiple lead singers, Loa performs all ten tracks.[9]
During a month-long residency at The Echo nightclub in Los Angeles, the band featured different shows each night – one show invited guest singers found via Craigslist to perform with the band as a sort of live karaoke;[10] another night saw metal bandViscera playing exclusively Fol Chen covers.[11]
In November 2010, Goldman and Loa traveled to Saint Petersburg, Russia, to perform two long-form, constructivist-inspired reworkings of the two studio albums, followed by a workshop and recording session where they invited local musicians (and curious non-musicians) to join them in building a new Fol Chen song.[12]
On July 28, 2011, Goldman and Loa held a workshop at the Walker Art CenterinMinneapolis to introduce the Fol Chen Verbal Algorithm Composer-Free Song Generator, produced with the Los Angeles–based arts organization Machine Project. The project allowed museum visitors to record their experience with a piece of art and have it converted into a song that they could take home.[13]
The band collaborated with Monome, a computer-manufacturing company, in late 2011 to make the Tetrafol, a motion-sensitive pyramidal sound device.[clarification needed] The Tetrafol came pre-loaded with Fol Chen samples but allowed users to apply their own sounds. The band released two singles made with the device and sold a limited run of 100 units.[14]
