Fennesz "Transition" and "On a Desolate Shore a Shadow Passes By"

Aquarius (USA):

The master returns. To teach the young ones a thing or two about the guitar. And about turning that guitar into something wholly other. It's been a while since we've heard from Christian Fennesz, but thankfully, very little has changed, he can still take a guitar and a laptop and create a dense world of dreamlike shimmer, with a deftness that puts most other soundmakers to shame. So here's a brief two song taste of what Fennesz has been up to lately. And if this single is any indication, the upcoming full length is going to be the drone-y dreamy disc of the year!

But for now, we'll take these two, and just play them over and over. The A side finds the guitar completely transformed into muted smears, the overall sound a shifting sea of corrosive crumbling distortion, but rendered in breathless whispers and washed out hues. The metallic thrum is spread out into soft shimmers, a murk that would almost sound industrial if it wasn't so pretty.

The flipside is more guitar oriented, a steel string acoustic, the melodies branching out in simple softly strummed strands, a skeletal framework for swirls of soft hiss and chunks of fragmented melody drifting by like leaves on a forest stream. The sound is like some simple folk music, broadcast via a staticky short wave radio, but beneath the guitar, and the dreamy hiss, are lush, stately swells melodic and cinematic, that infuse the track with a dark, but sweetly sorrowful elegiac quality. Gorgeous.

Warp Records (UK):

Gorgeous single from Fennesz and the first release in a long time from him. Beautifully engineered on 7" inch vinyl with a lock groove by Jason at Transition which might reveal a dual meaning to the name of this release.

The music on this seven is gorgeous, 'On a desolate shore' is all chiming guitar, delicate fx and space and 'A shadow passes by' is a deep guitar drone, which finishes in a lock groove.

Boomkat (UK):

For the first time since the original issue of his sublime 'Plays' EP, Christian Fennesz returns to the 7" format. You may recognise one of the sides on this release from the digital exclusive from the end of last year - it's an ocean current of superior, shimmering digital drones and frankly, it sounds awesome on vinyl. Since we've already spent our two cents on that track, let's get stuck into the other side: the guitar is far more pronounced here, nestled within an electrically charged breeze of fizzing sonic particles and debris. It's a recipe that's been copied extensively ever since 'Endless Summer' became big news, but what keeps Fennesz head and shoulders above the copyists is his complex, nuanced production, particularly when it comes to capturing his guitar. There really isn't any other electronic artist who seems capable of properly recording the instrument and harnessing the full richness of its timbres. This seven-inch exudes all that warmth and depth of personality, and is every bit the equal of the Chris Watson release that kicked off Touch's singles club... Utterly lovely.

San Francisco Bay Guardian Music Blog (USA):

After a long musical sojourn with former Yellow Magic Orchestra electronics magus Ryuichi Sakamoto on 2007’s Cendre (Touch), an extensive live collaboration with Mike Patton and a nomination for Best World Album by the Ethic Multicultural Media Awards (EMMA), Christian Fennesz returns to the sonorous shores of his past with a new 7-inch entitled "On a Desolate Shore a Shadow Passes By."

Released as a part of Touch’s vinyl-only Sevens series - which includes singles by Philip Jeck, Cabaret Voltaire’s Chris Watson, and Biosphere - "On a Desolate Shore" finds the Austrian laptop composer working within his métier as the digital scion of Brian Wilson, Kevin Shields, and Jim O’Rourke. Using his patented Mac patches to splay, splice, and caress a Stratocaster, Fennesz produces layer upon layer of compressed guitar feedback and processed glitches that spread out like a beach blanket on the windy sands of the Mediterranean. When a few chords suddenly appear from the whirring microtonal din, the noise musician-turned sculptor conveys with a Proustian flourish something truly magical: the distant memories of aquamarine sunsets and tawny sand dunes seem to emanate from the speakers.

Fennesz’s greatest strength has always been in his keen ability to formulate soundscapes that capture equally the coldest blasts of alien feedback and the most summery mosaic of acoustic guitar strums, chimes, and keyboard drones. Or rather, his compositions are at their most transfixing when they seem to play in music’s littoral zones, where the shallow grounds of textural play might suddenly give way to vast oceanic harmonics. In fact, the cover of the new release - a closeup of a sand path leading to the water’s edge - is once again supplied by photographer Jon Wozencroft and most likely comes from the same rustic-meets-glossy series that provided the cover for 2004’s Venice (Touch). And it does appear after a three-year divagation, Fennesz has returned there for inspiration. While "On a Desolate Shore" might be difficult listening for some, its affecting blend of digital minimalism and seaside dreams reaffirms why Fennesz is the most extraordinary ambient composer since Brian Eno. [Erik Morse]

Fennesz "Venice"

Voted No. 3 in The Top 50, The Wire, December 2004

cokemachineglow.com (net):

Fennesz is an artist eternally doomed to be underappreciated; the difficulty of a first approach to his works is potentially exhausting, and likely off-putting. Few listeners are willing to stand subtly intertwined lines of crackling feedback, woven into songs. Like so many brilliant lap-toppers, Fennesz's sounds are carefully chosen and unfamiliar in their composition - despite the fact that their slowly revealed internal structures are those of a kind of surreal pop. It seems that the under-appreciation of Fennesz is a classic example (and not the only one) of the artist that so many pop fans clamor for, but then ignore. You want something new? Someone who hasn't ripped off Brian Wilson or '80s pop/mod/chic or '70s glam or '60s drugs? Then summon some patience, and listen - carefully - to Fennesz. When "Circassian" crushes your heart with its feedback-muscled arms of melody and sonic power, you'll realize that all the "new" you ever needed is in one man: Christian Fennesz. Outlasting so many contemporaries who didn't make it past the 2000-2001 IDM craze, Fennesz continues to change his compositional style, while keeping it handily in the realm of the unique. And as Venice attests, he can't stop making masterpieces. [Amir Karim Nezar]

BBCi (UK):

Album of the week 19.04.04

Christian Fennesz is probably best known for 2001's Endless Summer, an album of processed reflections on the Beach Boys. This external focus, together with the deployment of guitar as primary instrumentation and the melodic undertow of the compositions, was perceived to set him apart from legions of glitch musicians working to a minimal, computer-based aesthetic. Such a view may be something of an exaggeration given that glitch, like breakbeat before it, is a viral entity which has already infected a wide range of musics. Whatever, there have been a number of Fennesz releases in the intervening years, but Venice will inevitably be viewed as the heir to Endless Summer. Both releases certainly share a sense of sunny warmth perhaps less familiar to their north European siblings.

Melody, depth and transparency are themes to be teased out, unwrapped or briefly spied here. Fennesz appears to be gradually approaching an essentialism which, although made up of a relatively limited number of parts, actively refuses reductivism.

The experience of listening to most of these twelve pieces might be compared to the act of viewing from a distance a series of Monet's weather and light studies (the Haystacks, the Poplars or Rouen Cathedral). The longer the gaze is maintained, the more the colours vibrate and the forms shimmer between abstraction and figuration. The lack of any form of overt rhythmic instrumentation further underlines this impression, causing the music to float like a mirage or apparition.

David Sylvian makes a sudden, declarative appearance on eighth track "Transit", his voice rich and high in the mix. Fennesz's approach appears to be that of a jewel-setter and it's undeniably a beautiful piece of work to behold, whether or not you¹re a fan of Sylvian's lyrics and delivery. It might however have become something else, had there been a little less reverence and a little more of the emphatic manipulation and shredding which Fennesz applies to his own guitar.

Even so, it's certainly a courageous decision to host a single vocal track within an otherwise instrumental album - encountering that signature voice immediately redefines the memory and experience of the tracks which precede it and thus the whole album. It's a compliment to the power of Fennesz's music that the more the album is heard, the more "Transit" settles in alongside its instrumental peers and Venice recovers its equilibrium like a boat initially in danger of capsizing.

The cover bears five photographs by Jon Wozencroft, each of which deals with water, surfaces and light. The images are reminiscent of cropped postcards, their colours rich but their arrangement lacking a defining subject to draw the eye and resolve the composition.

A similar interpretation may be applied to Fennesz's music, where shimmering layers of noise either obscure the subject or accumulate to become the subject themselves. The reference to postcards also finds an analogue in the relative brevity of the majority of the pieces here: it's as though they're synopses posted from other places and states of being. [Colin Buttimer]

The Wire (UK):

For those squeamish about syringes, there’s a method of removing earwax which involves lying on one side and having a bamboo straw inserted in your ear, the end of which is lit, creating a vacuum which slowly sucks up the wax. As this leisurely and not unpleasant process unwinds, your eardum is gently assailed by a series of tiny but intimate bubbling, hisses and crackles. This reminds in many ways of the music of Christian Fennesz and there are those who regard his particular mode of guitar-based, glitch-baked ‘idylltronica’ as no more than a teasing and prickling of the senses, a music wholly lacking in ‘depth’ or implications. Although Fennesz does indeed operate at surface level, however, such a judgment is itself superficial.

The Austrian-born Fennesz’s reputation has grown substantially in recent years, assisted by the patronage of the likes of David Sylvian (who appears on this album) and the critical, even commercial response to 2001’s Endless Summer, with its warmly abstract take on The Beach Boys’ song from which the album took its name. He’s regarded by some as glitch’s It Boy, the most likely to succeed in achieving some sort of breakthrough. Certainly, there’s at once a sense that Venice is weightier and more purposeful than its predecessor. If Endless Summer inclined towards the bucolic, Venice is painted in darker, more pregnant hues, like clouds prematurely blackening the late afternoon skies. This is evident on the opening "Rivers Of Sand", aptly self-descriptive of the more subtle, less liquid shifts of Fennesz’s sound. With its topography of scars and blemishes, it’s typical of his work, turning on the occasional CD–skipping effect, akin here to a sudden, sharp gust of breeze snapping at plastic awning. Such disruptions keep the listener slightly off-centre, don’t allow for reverie. Yet with its billowings, subsidences and Gothic recesses, it’s quite magisterial, distantly reminiscent of Vaughn Williams’s Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis, the sort of music that makes you want to rise to your feet. It’s a reminder that Fennesz is impelled by strong emotional undertow.

"Chateau Rouge" is initially a return to the pleasantries of Endless Summer, with its sparkling brooks of babbling electronica, before a tsunami of interference builds and eventually overwhelms the track. "City Of Light", meanwhile, could be an extract of Gavin Bryars’s The Sinking Of The Titanic, with its slow, disquieting, listing motion. Here, it’s as if the ship has long been abandoned.

"Circassian" features the assistance of guitarist Burkhard Stangl. The effect is like a more subdued My Bloody Valentine, Kevin Shields & co perceived through thick, distorted glass. Stangl also appears on "Laguna" the least ‘treated’ track on the album, and significantly, the only track which doesn't quite work. The very 'essence' of Fennesz is that he obscures the six-string origins of many of his sounds beyond recognition. Much more effective is "Transit", featuring a vocal contribution from Sylvian, whose lyric, an elegiac rumination on the theme of Europe, is way, way more effective than his faintly embarrassing, upcoming collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto. As the lyric winds down to some sort of oblivion –"Lights are dimming/the lounge is dark the best cigarette is saved for last" – Fennesz weaves a spare soundtrack of radioactive toxins and malfunctioning striplights as if to suggest that the national grid is on the point of sputtering out altogether.

This, coupled with the mountainously beautiful "The Point Of It All", is a reminder that there is a great deal more to Fennesz than so many yards of synthetic material. His musical language, though often suggestive of nature, is made up of wholly unnatural elements – distortions, errors, interference, jumps, disconnections, burnt out fuses, pops and pockmarks. Yet it is endlessly rekindling itself, refusing, finally, to die away all together. That’s the truth, the beauty, the humanity and the perturbability of it. Finally, the magnificently titled "The Stone Of Impermanence", with its hailstorm of static and aerial criss-cross of frazzled vapour trails, is a reminder that, like Eno, Fennesz has a rare quality in an increasingly commonplace genre. It’s that of piercing exactness, of getting beyond the mere mechanics and loops of the electronic process. Venice is more than mere fiddling. It burns. [David Stubbs]

Time Out New York (USA):

Junkmedia (USA):

Guitarist and electronic musician Christian Fennesz returns with Venice, his first full length in three years. Tracks like "Rivers of Sand" and "City of Light" are lovely ambient music, lushly arranged with pads of sustained synth harmonies. Sprinkled around the edges are off-kilter sounds from the noise or percussion spectrum, which keeps the material from getting staid. Other cuts, like "The Stone of Impermanence," feature more formally experimental and aggressive sounds in their arrangements.

Fennesz is joined by guitarist Burkhard Stangl on "Laguna" and "Circassian." The former is one of the more conventional sounding pieces on the album, with honest-to-goodness guitar chords ringing out, while the latter is built from swirling sheets of sound. David Sylvian makes a guest vocal appearance on "Transit," a first for Fennesz, as multi-tracked layers of his baritone are abetted by a canvass of buzzing guitars. Fennesz does an excellent job of balancing the IDM portions of his sound with more challenging layers of material, making music that is both individual in approach and eminently pleasing to hear. [Christian Carey]

Logo-Magazine (USA):

Folk music for a generation reared on powerbooks, ‘Venice’ is Christian Fennesz’s 4th, and most spellbinding LP to date. Marrying those blurred lines of My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins to frosty ebbs and flows, Fennesz is at once easy on the ears, but simultaneously reverberates with inner corruption. His is a hugely introspective haze of fuzz, drones and beats; drifting in its own inner-space, soundtracking the sun rising to its peak, or its later fall into slumber. Many others also do it finely, yet few thread guitars through cpu’s quite like Fennesz. Check those ambient rushes of ‘City Of Light’ or the spewed white-noise pop of ‘Chateau Rouge’, for his moments of beauty. Seek the Kevin Shields-esque mists of ‘Circassian’ or ‘The Stone Of Impermanence’, for Fennesz’s dalliances with darkness. Or be genuinely spooked by the rare vocal presence of David Sylvian, whose weird warble drops by for the haunting ‘Transit’. Fennesz here largely displays how eloquent the sound of the unspoken can be. ‘Venice’ is digital folk music, designed by the human heart, for the likes of you and me. [Ian Fletcher]

Kultureflash (web):

Venice is the fourth studio album in seven years by the Austrian laptop master Christian Fennesz, out on the amazing British label Touch. After his most recent release Live in Japan - considered by many to be the best recording of a live laptop performance - and his latest ground-breaking Endless Summer, Fennesz continues to push even further the boundaries of the digital instrument by incorporating smooth melodies and gentle textures. In this release - with Touch's usual lovely front cover photography - made on location in the summer 2003, Fennesz's guitar is constantly and intelligently present within his interrupted structures, making this album more accessible, yet without any lack of textural innovation. He even shows how easily he can blend vocals on the only sung track "Transit" with David Sylvian after Fennesz was a guest in the former Japan frontman's latest enchanting album Blemish. This is the warmest approach Fennesz has expressed in his soundscape experiments by referring to them in the smoothest emotional manner. A record which is highly recommended to anyone interested in discovering his work as much as it is a must buy for those already in tune with his granular music.

Time Out (UK):

The fourth LP from digital adventurer (and occasional David Sylvian collaborator) Christian Fennesz should cement his reputation as one of today’s most rapturous laptop composers. 'Venice' is perhaps his warmest and most conventionally melodic work so far, setting gorgeous washes and softly bevelled slabs of processed guitar against glitchy pulses to sublimely emotional effect. Somehow expressing both the pain of the detached soul and the ecstacy of love, it should find a welcome home with fans of My Bloody Valentine, Bowie’s ‘Low’ and Sylvian (who guests on 'Transit'). [Sharon O’Connell]

Absorb (UK):

If 2001’s Endless Summer initiated a paradigm shift towards a more emotional strain of laptop electronica, then Venice represents a subtle advance upon it as opposed to an equivalent leap. Given the rapturous reception that greeted Endless Summer, it would be difficult to imagine the follow-up being its equal, but Venice is not only that but perhaps even better, although that’s less obvious given its more restrained style. Of course Fennesz smartly eased the mounting pressure by releasing Live in Japan and Field Recordings 1995-2002 in the interim yet Venice is the clear successor to Endless Summer. As before, so unique is his sound that the erstwhile critic struggles in vain for vocabulary rich enough to distill its essence into language. The music unfolds according to some internal, organic logic that’s ineffable yet seems natural, and there’s a mercurial and enigmatic quality to his style that renders it powerful. Fennesz manages the remarkable feat of channeling deep emotion into sound that’s uncompromisingly advanced and cerebral, with the result at times uncannily poignant. The magnificent opener ‘Rivers of Sand’ is a perfect case in point. With its shimmering streams and hazy smears, it’s a spectacular marriage of pure electronic textures and affecting melancholia. Fennesz here alchemizes icy shards of sound into sensual vistas.

Unlike Endless Summer, Venice adopts a more ambient style on many tracks. ‘Château Rouge’ is a becalmed oasis conjured by grinding waves of noise and flicker, while ‘The Other Face’ is a drone-like slab of swirling crackle inside of which slowly broils a mass of seething static. Even better is the majestic ‘Circassian’ whose sound suggests the processed sounds of a thousand humming monks filtered through gargantuan waves of steely abrasion. Guitar is less dominantly featured on Venice, ‘Laguna,’ a largely untreated episode of strums and picking, the sole exception. Perhaps inspired by his involvement in Touch’s Spire project, organ figures prominently on the phantom, spectral shimmer of ‘The Point of It All’ and ‘City of Light.’ The former’s ghostly themes are obscured by gently thrumming waves, whereas the latter’s shimmering clicks are heard through a Fenneszian blur. ‘The Stone of Impermanence,’ an anthemic, seething fireball of guitar distortion, ends Venice in grand fashion yet even when the sound is intensely raw, the mournful melancholy of the song’s melodies seeps through. The most obvious surprise is the addition of vocals, if only to one track. Fennesz appeared on David Sylvian’s 2003 Blemish and the one-time Japan frontman returns the favour on ‘Transit.’ His deep, sonorous voice seems jarring at first, perhaps because it seems initially overdramatic and cloying when it’s mixed so high. But soon the controlled majesty of the song takes root, and the beautiful conjunction of his multi-tracked singing and Fennesz’s magisterial support becomes clear. When Sylvian utters “Follow me / Won’t you follow me,” the melancholy lyric and mournful melody fuse into a siren call that’s irresistible. It’s a gloriously transcendent event on a recording that abounds with similarly magical moments. [Ron Schepper]

MusiqueMachine (USA):

How endless exactly is Christian Fennesz’s summer? On Venice it is in its last stage; the days are hot and humid, but the leaves are already assuming a golden tinge. This is a music for an Italian palazzo or a shadowy church in September, a bottle of red wine in hand, and the far-off bustle of city life outside. There is a heaviness in the air that was absent on Endless summer... I wonder what Fennesz’s winter will sound like?

It is amazing how potent the name Fennesz has become in the complex and torn landscape that is the current electronica scene. A mere utterance of those two syllables is enough to explain the characteristics of the work of dozens of other artists: warm and rich, layered, gritty, glitchy, endlessly alluring soundscapes; the limitless potential of a guitar, as it seeps its way through the laptop filter or who knows what other kinds of sonic manipulation. This status is completely earned; albums such as Plus forty seven degrees 56'37" minus sixteen degrees 51'08" and the instant classic Endless summer (on Mego, which seems to be past perfect for Fennesz) are landmarks, milepoles, or would be if those terms hadn’t been used so ridiculously often as to render them meaningless.

It is very satisfying but hardly surprising that this new album, years in the making (at one point Fennesz lost nearly everything, and had to start over) and endlessly announced and postponed, does not suffer from the huge expectations that have grown and increased month by month. Endless summer was always going to be a towering presence, but Venice is strong and confident enough to reach for similar heights just like that. Thirty seconds into Rivers of sand I am smiling beatifically, immerged in the almost tactile warmth of the sound. A gondola and a garden and a bottle of Christ’s blood: wish we were there. Venice is unabashedly romantic, heavy with melancholy: a sweetly scorching ache.

David Sylvian repays the favour (a favour name A fire in the forest, on his brilliant Blemish album) with a well-judged vocal contribution on Transit, a lament for Europe. Burkhard Stangl (of Vienna improv ensemble Polwechsel; seek out the 2002 Polwechsel + Fennesz album Wrapped islands) contributes his guitar playing to Laguna and Circassian, to startling effect: the guitar’s return to its original, familiar form makes it sound positively reborn in a landscape strewn with the disintegration and detritus wrought by Fennesz. Gorgeous songs The point of it all and The stone of impermanence prolong the rapture to the very end of the disc. I have listened repeatedly. I have listened very well. Another instant classic, then. We open up another bottle. [David Bauwens]

The Onion AV Club (USA):

Christian Fennesz cast himself as a different sort of laptop artist with his first true breakout record, a brief single on which he whittled The Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black" and The Beach Boys' "Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)" down to raspy flakes of sound. They were unrecognizable impressions from a scientific mind, but they were also unduly warm and musical, as guided by the natural world as a folkie picking riffs at sundown. Endless Summer, from 2001, followed in kind, charting a dense, mesmerizing patch where the quirks of musicians and technicians intersect. That hallmark album was rough and scratchy, but its abstraction lapped itself in a race toward process-intensive beauty that was hard to boil down to its computer roots.

The new Venice follows similar cues to more immersive ends. Recorded on location in Italy, the album stamps 12 sonic postcards from a city awash in romance and ruin. "Rivers Of Sand" starts off with a gorgeous ambient swath, its slow-flowing melody layered with rough textures that rub rather than rip. Fennesz follows precursors from the whole of ambient electronic music, but his dense and weightless structures owe as much to the cascading builds of shoegazer rock bands like My Bloody Valentine. His tracks play as rootless compositions, but they unfold like songs, wavering around riffs and impressions that tease and tug through the end. In "Circassian," churning guitar chords enter as a glut of noise before separating, like a frantic splash expanding into lazy waves. The water motif fits all of Fennesz's supersaturated moods, but his ostensible travelogue pays as much mind to the oil slicks that grease Venice's grand canals.

An atypical stretch of vocals, sung by David Sylvian and placed inordinately high in the mix, breaks the album's spell in "Transit." But Venice resumes its sculptured shapelessness in no time, cementing Fennesz's role as a master of ambient computer music that brings the outside in. [Andy Battaglia]

Pitchfork Media (USA):

In an interview with The Wire last year, Kid606 let slip that, like many electronic producers in his sphere, he could create an album in one night. He asserts that the software has gotten so good that making tracks is just that easy: Talent is kinda nice - and probably adds something to the equation - but it's not really required. There's no question that the perceptible dip in interest in experimental electronic music in recent years has something to do with the fact that there are so many labels, artists, and, above all, records that don't sound different enough from one another to warrant special attention.

But then there's Christian Fennesz. When it comes to recording under his own name, Fennesz works slowly: Venice is only his fourth full-length studio album in seven years, and his first since 2001's groundbreaking Endless Summer, which altered the perception of experimental electronic music with pop leanings. Fennesz has remained busy by remixing, collaborating, touring (both on his own and with FennO'Berg), and re-releasing his back catalog, but - considering Kid606's admission - three years is a long time between albums for an artist such as Fennesz.

With every album, Fennesz's music has become prettier and more accessible yet still retains his distinctive style - and Venice is no exception. That's fortunate for the uninitiated because as Fennesz's reputation has grown, each new offering has served as the perfect introduction to his work. "Rivers of Sand" opens Venice with deep bass pedals working against pinched swoons of feedback. It's completely electronic, but this piece would also sound fantastic in an arrangement for strings. "Château Rouge" is in the vein of the bent instrumental pop of Endless Summer, with what sounds like an organ melody (simple, just a few notes) beset by synth gurgles and pinstripe bands of white noise. Its "middle-eight" is vertical howls of machine noise, but its purpose is the same as the bridge of any pop song - to offer a variation on the themes presented earlier. "The Other Face" also feels as if Fennesz were taking some of the ideas from Endless Summer and pushing them in a different direction, here adding ethereal vocal samples to the buzzing mix.

The short track "Onsra" serves as an intro to Venice's centerpiece, "Circassian", which was written and performed with fellow avant guitarist Burkhard Stangl (who has previously worked with Fennesz as a member of Polwechsel). When people talk about Fennesz's Kevin Shields fixation they're thinking of tracks like this. "Circassian" drowns in loud, slightly out-of-tune power chords, each of which leads a long and happy life after the initial strum. The string reverberations multiply and mutate endlessly, making it possible to imagine cathedrals, a jet airplane passing through billowy clouds at 500mph, or the volatile racket of a tropical storm. Markus Schmickler gave it a shot, but no one does neo-shoegaze laprock as well as Fennesz.

On Venice, Fennesz also continues to dabble with pop. Last year, he collaborated with David Sylvian on the former Japan singer's Blemish, and that partnership continues here with "Transit". When a record contains only a single vocal track, the tendency is to place too much focus on it. That anomalous track always seems destined to summarize or "explain" the record somehow, yet the particular concerns voiced by Sylvian on "Transit" don't blend easily with its abstract aesthetic joys. Still, as a song, it works well and would have made a nice non-album single. Fennesz has demonstrated a sympathetic yet adventurous ear when supporting vocalists. On "Transit", a low organ sound anchors the tune but all sorts of strange explosions do the real work, simultaneously marking the changes and shifts in the song and reinforcing its structure. Fennesz flirts with a different kind of conventionality with "Laguna", a guitar duet with Stangl with a serious Morricone vibe.

Venice's quality extends beyond its sound. Touch proprietor Jon Wozencroft-- through his breathtaking design and photography - continues to fight the good fight against records-as-pure-data by making the CD a value-added prospect. More importantly, the music is of a high standard. One thing that is made clear by Venice is that Fennesz is a composer who spends as much or more time crafting melodies and chords as he does searching for the perfect texture. He works regularly with improvisers, but his records under him own name could not be more orderly, with discrete sections carefully structured to maximize their emotional impact. (The symphonic nature of last year's Live in Japan is strongly present here.) Thanks in part to that emotional heft, I have a feeling that long after many of the experimental electronic records from the past ten years disappear, we'll continue to reach for the works of Fennesz. [Mark Richardson]

The Declaration Online (Web):

Two blue empty row boats left listless on rippling water. Red orange green riverbed foliage reflected in the water's gauzy oil slick surface. An airport enveloped in dull gray stratus and snow. Upon seeing the photography and packaging accompanying Christian Fennesz's latest recording, Venice, it is clear that the record label Touch remains intent on not simply putting out records but creating audiovisual imprints dedicated to inextricably tying sound and vision.

Over the past twenty-two years Touch's founder, Jon Wozencroft, has covered each record release with a stunning array of visual imagery - photographs, video stills of natural scenes - that leads the listener into a deeper immersion in the music. Tension exists at the heart of Touch's aesthetic, something often lacking on other distinctive and visually oriented labels such as ECM or, for that matter, the New Age-prone Windham Hill. Lush, sublime natural imagery often rubs against cold, artificially processed music or the reverse. This tension exists not only in the audio and visual components of Venice but it is also the hallmark of Fennesz's music. Sharp and icy shards of digitally processed sounds clash with warm and beautiful melodies, each always vying for the upper hand. Contrast and tension, detachment and intimacy: they are what elevate Venice and the music of Christian Fennesz above a gluttonous experimental electronic genre. Venice begins by immediately coating digitally processed pops and purrs with wisps of melody that vanish and as quickly as they appear. Tracks such as "Rivers of Sand" and "Chateau Rouge" brim with these sounds and weave them through doleful melodic interludes that give the music its heart. Listening to this, I'm immediately reminded of an underappreciated album called Formed Verse the artist Neina released on the Mille Plateaux, which also effectively juxtaposed abstract sound with faint and mysterious melody. What sets Fennesz apart is an exquisite sense of proportion and his ability to emphasize the tension between the natural and artificial, between the warm and cold, consistently throughout his music.

Other tracks vere from this formula just a bit such as "Circassian," which seems suggestive of the "neo-shoegaze" revival that has recently popped up for some reason. Undoubtedly, Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine loom heavily over the track's blissed-out guitar sound though the lack of percussion reminds you that this is not rock music. On "The Stone of Impermanence"' repetitive and heavily distorted guitar chords sounds almost indistinguishable from what Flying Saucer Attack and Roy Montgomery were doing in the middle 1990s, or even the Jesus and Mary Chain before that time. But, again, it is Fennesz's knack for adding the subtlety and nuance of his digitally processed sound to a seemingly straightforward pop formula here that keeps this from being anything "neo" or blatantly borrowed.

"The Point of It All," perhaps the most affecting track on the record, contains a beautifully sweeping, almost symphonic sound. The melody and melancholia emitted from the music sounds strikingly similar to Hans Zimmer's score for The Thin Red Line. Other tracks stand out for different reasons. "Transit" continues the record's focus on clashing sound and melody but suddenly injects the vocals of David Sylvian, with whom Fennesz collaborated on a track for Sylvian's 2003 solo album, Blemish. Sylvian concludes the track crooning the verse, "The lights are dimming, the lounge is dark, the best cigarette is saved for last / We drink alone." Sylvian creates a fitting final image that encapsulates the isolation and contemplativeness evoked in Venice while at the same time returning the listener to the music's visual component. [Scott Matthews]

Igloo (net):

"...Fennesz's Venice is a record that obscures as much as it reveals like Turner's watercolors of the sea, sky and stone of Venice: you take it all in because, ultimately, you can't be sure where one part stops and another begins..."

Christian Fennesz works primarily with laptop and guitar and set a new standard for the combination of the two with 2001's Endless Summer where he melded electronic detritus and noise to the open and organic sound of a guitar to build the first pop record for the binary world. Venice is his follow-up and finds him in a more introspective, somber mood, taking the shimmering guitar on a course through territory once ruled by Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine. Fennesz's Venice is a record that obscures as much as it reveals like Turner's watercolors of the sea, sky and stone of Venice: you take it all in because, ultimately, you can't be sure where one part stops and another begins. "Rivers of Sand" is a wash of particles, thousands of tiny grains rushing together to create a river of static noise over a ghostly chorus and a lone guitar. Melodies are submerged beneath this wave of sand and Fennesz moves his hand across the wave, creating breaks in the stream for the melodies to bleed through. "Chateau Rouge" fuzzes guitar over a wellspring of artesian water, the bubbling fountain acting as the percussive element in the otherwise glistening ambience of the track.

"Laguna" is free of any distortion, a simple guitar duet between Fennesz and Burkhard Stangl as if the two were sitting on a balcony overlooking the canals, serenading the passing gondolas and the wheeling sea birds. There is a sense that time has sidestepped you in the streets of Venice, as if you left the modern world at the train station, and with this separation from modern time comes a sense of wistful melancholy and nostalgia. You can hear "Laguna" in the streets of Venice as you become lost in the Byzantine turns and double-backs which thread the city. "Laguna" follows you, echoing off the narrow walls and close rooftops; "Laguna" tugs at you from beneath the bridges and from the grates set low in the water. "Circassian," on the other hand, is filled with noise -- monolithic sheets of echo delay -- as Fennesz and Stangl create waves and waves of sound. Reminiscent of Lovelieschrushing's sonic whirlwind, "Circassian" is meant for the belly of old cathedrals where the endless sonic waves can fill the high space between the floor and the arched roof and rounded cupolas.

David Sylvian contributes the single voice on the record, his languid delivery sliding over a field of scattered noise and static -- water droplets caught by tiny microphones and tweaked into distortion-laced bursts of sound. "Do you feel what I feel?" Sylvian inquires in "Transit," his velvet voice weaving itself about your shoulders. The city can be quite empty at night, silent but for the distant brush of wood against stone and the rhythmic tap-tap of water. In these silences, you will find voices like Sylvian's, spectral ghosts that whisper, "Follow me. Won't you follow me?"

My objectivity goes out the window during "City of Light" as Fennesz welds together layers of fuzz and drones into a shimmering soundtrack, which mirrors the play of light against the moving waters of the Grand Canal at night. I visited the city of Venice once and fell in love with the crooked waterways and the old stones. I am in love all over again during "The Other Face" as Fennesz applies his digital layering to his guitar, to the wind which whispers down the stone alleys, to the rain which spatters off the shutters and railings of the hotel windows, to the sound of the water in the winding canals which track through the body of Venice. What Fennesz leaves in my head with his music is 16mm film versions of my memories, the frames stained at the edges and blurred by static and pops. The colors are still rich -- still vibrant -- but everything is softened and scarred by having been looped a few thousand times in my head. Still, like all your favorite things, you still keep replaying them even as time and entropy wear them away into nothingness. Ah, Venice. [Mark Teppo]

Stylus (USA):

With Endless Summer Christian Fennesz amply demonstrated that the Beach Boys’ influence can be taken in directions radically different to the usual harmonic pilfering and put-on wide-eyed wonder that most followers of Brian Wilson seem to feel does justice to America’s finest and maddest pop artist. I never understood the fuss about Pet Sounds, but the way Fennesz dissolved its essence in layers of stereoscopic interference and interplanetary noise was more compelling than a dozen indie bands with big drums and weak singers.

After the relative success of Endless Summer, as much to do, perhaps, with its cover and presentation as its sonics, Fennesz retreated back to the world of field recordings and complete abstraction. Venice sees him wandering back towards the real world once again, but never too close. As ever, Fennesz makes music that sounds as if he’s dropped his laptop into the ocean and recorded the resultant sound of its electronic struggle against drowning, or as if he’s set fire to a piece of vinyl that was playing at the wrong speed anyway; it is noise, but it is beautiful noise. If Endless Summer’s lineage in the Beach Boys was a conceptual way in for listeners not used to his particular brand of Austrian experimentation, then those same listeners could be pulled in again by leaning towards the idea that Venice is a love song to Europe’s most romantic city, an abstract psalm where carefully placed noise can be as beautiful and poetic as carefully placed words.

The album is mostly constructed from unidentifiable electrical noise, but occasionally Fennesz leaves his guitar recognisable, such as on “Laguna” which is as if someone had dissolved “Runeii” from Laughing Stock in acid, while “City Of Light” is little more than the hum of static but it rises and drifts in such a manner that it gives swell to your heart, makes you hold the back of your neck and gaze out of your window. “The Stone Of Impermanence” begins with a violent thrash and then quietly dies over the course of the next five minutes, and “Circassian” is unassailable constructivism, rising and rising and rising, building towers atop mountains (fucking astonishing) using only sand and leaves and powdered, eroded cement dust, static vistas stricken by electrical storms far off, beautiful to look at, better to touch, but intangible. Love is not the fulfilment of yearning.

David Sylvian returns a favour on “Transit” after Fennesz guested on the stark Blemish, talking of saving cigarettes and leaving Europe, drinking alone and encouraging doomed romanticism amongst those who admire doomed romanticism, but his sonorous and languorous voice intrudes perhaps too far into the otherwise suspiciously beatific abstraction. A series of pulses like waves racing around a pier in a manner that resembles enormous, sodden angel’s wings buoy Sylvian’s precarious voice, impinging the instrumental (if one can summon these sounds from mere instruments) tenure and interrupting the otherwise understandable wordless flow.

Fennesz makes Boards Of Canada sound like Daft Punk and My Bloody Valentine sound like Oasis. He does with sound what Stan Brakhage did with film, altering its very fabric and texture, employing disorder and error as forms of communication and expression. He forces you to alter your understanding of the world around you by challenging you to see things differently, to learn a different method of perception and interpretation, to look beneath the chaos that seems to govern the movements of life and find the patterns beneath, to understand that every variable cannot be measured, every analogue cannot be known. Venice is a fine continuation of his peculiar and unique aesthetic. [Nick Southall]

PitchForkMedia (USA):

Fennesz [ft. David Sylvian]: "Transit"

Fennesz plays John Franz to David Sylvian's Scott Walker on this ultra-modern slice of electronic balladry from the Austrian's forthcoming Venice album. The cold, brooding textures of static-drone and distant chordal accompaniment support Sylvian's understated, dramatic paean to the "shared history of Europe." The Walker comparison seems apt next to the reclusive legend's similarly bleak (yet deeply emotional) statements on Tilt and the Pola X soundtrack. Fennesz accentuates the chorus with small explosions of old-school analog synth filtered through new-school calculated chaos, and Sylvian's baritone harmonies capture perfectly the sophisticated, almost debonair melancholia one might expect of someone lamenting his fate in the Old World. Dignified and subtle. [Dominique Leone; March 19th, 2004]

VITAL (The Netherlands):

A new Fennesz studio CD is always something to look out for, he belongs to the absolute top when it comes to laptop music. So far these studio releases are quite sparse, but it must be said that each is a step forward. 'Venice' is more than just a follow up to 'Endless Summer' - his previous studio release from 2001. In the first part of the CD, Fennesz uses the grainy, bit-rot sound that he is known in a more ambient context. Slow, peaceful tracks, which hoover a nice springtime warmth. Probably he uses guitar here (many keep forgetting that Fennesz is a guitarist), but the transformation of the guitar is beyond recognition. In 'Circasian' he adds fuzz to the guitar and shows a love for shoegazing music. With the piece 'Transit', things seem to change on the CD. That piece uses a rhythm and more surprisingely the vocals of David Sylvian. The pieces after that have a more clear guitar playing and here the processings are kept to a minimum. As a whole this is a very coherent CD, of which the influence of David Sylvian seems apparent: dreamy music, ambient yet poppy in approach. Much more subtle in approach than 'Endless Summer' and a step closer to popmusic. It wouldn't be a too big surprise if the next one (2007 by my count) would seen a continuation of the final pieces of the CD and Fennesz scoring his first hit single. 'Venice' is the forecast of more beauty to come. (FdW)

The Milk Factory (UK):

There is something totally unique in the music of Fennesz that brings experimental and evocative so close together that the boundary is often blurred. If this has been true from his first records, his 2001 album Endless Summer, released on Austrian label Mego, totally redefined his sound in many ways, making it more appealing, warmer, and ultimately more accessible, while retaining the visionary landscapes of its predecessors. Three years on and Christian Fennesz continues to reshape, with Venice, his musical manifesto, bringing on board new elements to give his textures a more human aspect. Hailing from the Austrian capital, Vienna, Christian Fennesz first appeared as part of experimental rock ensemble Maische before he started releasing his solo material on Mego in 1995. His first four track EP, Instrument, showcased his heavily treated and layered guitar sounds combined with electronic textures and glitches, in just four tracks. A year or so later, he offered a more extended and comprehensive version of his sonic vision on the Hotel Paral.lel album. Since, he has taken part in an impressive number of projects, collaborating with the likes of Jim O’Rourke, Peter Rehberg, Biosphere [no, he hasn't - ed.] or Rosy Parlane on records, got involved with numerous art installations and worked on a couple of soundtracks. His 2001 album Endless Summer saw Fennesz applying a warmer, more melodic template to his sonic construction, gaining in the process new devoted followers. Following the Field Recordings 1995-2003 compilation released last year on Touch, Christian Fennesz is now unleashing the long awaited follow up to Endless Summer in the shape of Venice. Loosely arranged in four sections articulated around three short interludes, Onsra, Onsay and Asusu, this album continues to explore beautiful dense soundscapes. Once again, Fennesz’s treated guitars and electronics form the backbone of this album, with ephemeral melodies emerging from the fog only to be swallowed again. Meticulously layering his sounds into vast vaporous constructions, Fennesz arranges his textures to either clash against or morph into stunning beat-less backdrops, translating a wide range of emotions into his music. Bringing on board Austrian experimental guitarist Burkhard Stangl on the stunning and grandiose Circassian, one of the highlights of this record, and the effortless Laguna, and ex-Japan front man David Sylvian on Transit, a song at times reminiscent of This Mortal Coil, Fennesz engages in new challenges, confidently developing new scopes for his music. Slightly darker than its predecessor, Venice offers some superb dreamy moments (Rivers Of Sand, Circassian, The Other Face or the closing The Stone Of Impermanence), bringing to the surface the more granular side of Fennesz’s music to the surface. For this fifth original solo album, Fennesz appears to bring more than ever the density of his sonic experimentations and the lightness of his arrangements together. Totally at ease with his beautiful soundscapes, building up on his previous work yet effortlessly injecting fresh elements to allow his music to evolve almost by itself, Christian Fennesz creates with this album a faultless soundtrack that will have Kevin Shields die of jealousy.

Aquarius (USA):

Christian Fennesz' 2001 album Endless Summer firmly established him as one of the electronic avant-garde's greats with his delirious balance of hotwired digital glitches and a nostalgic revisitation of summery pop sensibilities. The assimilation of overloaded digital filtering technologies and guitar driven song fragments has continued to be Fennesz' strongest asset through his celebrated arrangements for David Sylvian's Blemish album, and has even earned him a curious forthcoming collaboration with Sparklehorse! Venice is his fourth studio album and clearly stands as his best work to date. According to Asphodel's Naut Humon, Venice was almost a doomed project, as Fennesz' hard drive crashed less than a month before he needed to deliver the record to Touch. With about a quarter of the album salvagable, he scrambled to reassemble the album from memory. While it's hard to say if this time constraint benefitted or detracted from his process, the album itself is stunningly good. Just as Endless Summer channelled the acid fried spirit of Brian Wilson, Venice also finds itself an album with a muse: Kevin Shields. There have always been short-circuited elements of My Bloody Valentine shot from Fennesz' tricked out guitar sound; but Venice pushes Fennesz affection for shoegazer's buccolic atmospheres and sublime melodies to the forefront with marvelous results. Each song appears to be nerve-rattlingly familiar; yet just as Endless Summer invoked Brian Wilson without ever resorting to selfconscious quotation, each of his tracks glides along the same oceanic currents authored by Slowdive, AR Kane, Ride, Loveliescrushing, and The Cocteau Twins. Again, no direct references can be heard in Venice; rather Fennesz taps directly into the hopelessly romantic sentimentality of shoegazer music and replicates it perfectly behind a light dusting of digital pixels.

The one track which gives us pause on Venice is the single collaboration with David Sylvian. While this track on its own works as good if not better than anything on their aforementioned Blemish album, it sticks out like sore thumb against the sublimely textured ambience which dominates the remainer of the record. If every album only had one minor miscalculation, the world would be much better off; thus, we're more than willing to look beyond this track and tell you that this will undoubtedly be the best electronic record of 2004 and one of the all around best records of the year!!

Echoes (Germany):

Manche Alben vollbringen das doch eher seltene Kunststück, den Hörer mit auf eine Reise zu nehmen. Alben, bei denen sich keine vordergründigen Geschichtenerzählungen aufdrängen, sondern alleine Stimmungen und Klangflächen dafür sorgen, dass man zutiefst bewegt wirst. „Venice“, das neue Album von Christian Fennesz, ist eines dieser seltenen Juwele, die eben das zustande bringen. Die zwölf Stücke von diesem Werk sind meilenweit von der seelenlosen Hintergrunduntermalung vieler Ambient-Platten entfernt. Die Klangmalereien von „Venice“ verstärken Stimmungen, Gefühle und Geschichten, die sich im Kopf abspielen. Fennesz lässt sich mit seinen Klangkompositionen und Texturen genügend Zeit und setzt nicht auf den schnellen und hektischen Augenblick. Seine Laptop-Musik gleitet gelassen dahin. Zudem beinhaltet sie stets etwas Traumhaftes und Dunkles, wobei auch immer wieder Licht durch diesen Soundteppich blickt. Somit erhalten die minimalen Oberflächen von Christian Fennesz eine angenehme Wärme. Dafür sorgen zudem die teilweise eingestreuten analog gefärbten Klänge und Gitarrenspuren. Bei Stücken wie beispielsweise ‚Circassian‘ tritt sogar eine ähnlich verdichtete Stimmung zutage, wie sie Kevin Shield mit seinen My Bloody Valentine herauf beschworen hat, und die sich so selten in Musikproduktionen wiederfindet. Wunderschön auch die leisen Knistergeräusche, die sich oftmals in den Soundtrack mischen und so ungemein sinnlich wirken. Gesang gibt es auf diesem Album nur einmal. David Sylvian verleiht dem Stück ‚Transit‘ seine Stimme und revanchiert sich damit für die Produzententätigkeit, die Fennesz dem letztjährigen Sylvian-Album zuteil werden ließ. "Venice" erscheint übrigens auf dem Londoner Touch-Label, welches vor mittlerweile über 20 Jahren von Jon Wozencroft und Mike Harding gegründet wurde. Das audiovisuell ausgelegte Label hat sich gerne den avantgardistischen Tönen verschrieben, um neue Hörerlebnisse und -wahrnehmungen vorzustellen. Für den kunstvollen Anstrich der Touch-Produkte sorgt seit jeher die sehr einheitliche und straighte Artwork-Gestaltung, mit kühl-melancholischen Fotografien von Labelgründer Jon Wozencroft himself. Auf Touch Records, welches Künstler wie Richard H. Kirk, The Hafler Trio und Biosphere vereint, hat Christian Fennesz nun also sein passendes musikalisches Zuhause gefunden. [Roland Adam]

(Italy):

Please allow me to disturb myself It has been some albums that fennesz started to prune the abyss between research and pop music without ever kneeling down to dancing beats. The Austrian artist started out as a garden architect and a guitar player (the project Maische), before developing both as a musician and as an artist (many are his sound installations leading to the latest Biennale of Venice). Without any Berlin as a holyland of glitch music interacting with his inspiration, he is meticulously active on the conceptual side of a research area that has jagged borders. He lives between the outskirts of Vienna and some holiday house near Venice the continuous sound transformation that he slowly publishes. His extraordinary skill of shaping the visionary course of his "soundtracks without movies" probably originates from a different approach compared with the multitude that works on the redemption of shred and stained sounds. Christian Fennesz puts his guitar under the glow of the powerbook apple light when working on chords and low frequencies. A similar marriage of reverberations was sublimated in the touching and dazzling 2001 "Endless summer", and now becomes outlining "Venice", yet another topic on that narrow line between dream and understanding. At the centre and on the borders at the same time, this town has kept its promise to give itself only to the bravest who are willing to walk far fro traditional paths. The chilly modulations warm themselves on the levers thanks most of all to the gaze of sonic disturbance, so becoming the heirs of the elegance and the bleakness of a town that disappears in the sunsets in Mestre, and then dies behind a humidity-eaten chimney far from the ideal of a clean synthetic sound. The porosity of the low frequencies fills itself with the samples unealthy water, while waiting for the guitar of Burkhard Stangl (formerly part of Polwechsel) and of Fennesz himself (Circassian, Laguna) to develop a song form, or waiting for the redundant voice of David Sylvian in the only sung track (Transit). The overwhelming of expanded textures (Rivers of sand), the precise and obstinate drip (Chateau rouge) and the metallic reverberations (The other face, The point of it all) are a surprise in a calle tread on a thousand times, in the magma of noise. In front of it all, there is the artwork of Jon Wozencroft, who takes part also in the live performances completing the trance effect with his visual. We were talking about Venice, without having ever seen the empty Arsenale, and the vast spaces in which a long time ago ships brought in waves. [Donatella Freasie]

Kinda Muzik (The Netherlands):

Hoe ga je met de druk om als je een tijdje terug door de schrijvende pers eensgezind snoepje van de week bent verklaard? Want dat gebeurde er plotsklaps met de Oostenrijkse experimentele laptop-glitcher/gitarist Christian Fennesz, nadat hij stiekem wonderschone zomerse liedjes onder een dikke deken van witte ruis en onrustbarend stekelige clicks'n'cuts had gestopt op het fenomenale Endless Summer. Ongehoord veel positieve media-aandacht viel de goede man en zijn muziek ten deel, en dat terwijl hij geen enkele concessie richting groot publiek had gemaakt en gewoon stug was doorgegaan op de weg waar zijn voorgaande werkstukken hem naar toe hadden gebracht. Succes en integriteit gingen bij Fennesz wonderwel samen. Gevolg was wel dat er hele volksstammen een Pavlov-reactie lieten zien bij het alleen al horen of zien van een Fennesz-referentie, ook al tussendoor gevoed door grandioze oudedoosopnames (Field Recordings 1995-2002) of kleinschalige live-albums (Live in Japan). Het wachten op de echte, nieuwe Fennesz plaat bleef echter knagen en jeuken. Welk een druk moet er door de beste man zijn gevoeld? Hoe dan ook, mocht dat laatste al zo zijn, dan is er werkelijk helemaal niets van te merken op deze hagelnieuwe schijf. Sterker nog, Venice is nog meer dan Endless Summer en al zijn andere werken een toonbeeld van pure schoonheid en rauwe emotie. Geen eindeloze zomer dit keer, veeleer lijkt de zwaarmoedige pracht een herfstgevoel te willen overbrengen. Als geen ander lukt het Fennesz om abstracte electronica en minimale ambient te koppelen aan diepe gevoelens en menselijkheid. En dat niet alleen, hij zorgt ook nog eens voor een perfecte synthese tussen analoog en digitaal, mens en machine: hij laat zijn zacht galmende gitaarakkoorden (en ook die van gastmuzikant Burkhard Stangl) via zijn laptop uitwaaieren naar de verre zwarte gaten waar ook Kevin Shields en zijn My Bloody Valentine zo graag bivakkeerde, zonder dat hij een moment dichter bij afgekloven shoegaze komt. Ritme lijkt van geen belang, alles verdrinkt welwillend in een zee van sfeer en puur zijn: geen verleden, geen heden, geen toekomst. Muziek die een non-lineaire realiteit beschrijft? Alleen in de samenwerking met David Sylvian komt de muziek even aan onze hedendaagse oppervlakte. Sylvian, vorig jaar door Fennesz al in de watten gelegd op zijn superieure Blemish, betaalt hem met minstens gelijke munt terug in het intense 'Transit'. Waar in eerste verwondering overheerst over de manier waarop Sylvians stem zo pontificaal bovenop de muziek is "gelegd", lijkt er bij nadere beluistering steeds meer een 'het heeft zo moeten zijn'-gevoel te gaan bestaan. De als altijd tegelijkertijd afstandelijke en gevoelige stem van Sylvian klinkt als een perfect natuurlijke aanvulling op de muziek. Sylvian lijkt dan ook bovenal een kindred spirit, iemand die net als Fennesz zoekt naar pure esthetiek door een minimalistische benadering. Wat dat betreft lijkt er een soort van ongrijpbare driehoek te zijn ontstaan in combinatie met Mark Hollis, ook al zo'n eenzaam genie die het moest hebben van emotioneel minimalisme. Voorbeeld: het intens melancholieke 'The Point of It All' laat hen drieën onbewust samenkomen in een aanhoudend bombardement van klaarblijkelijk recente verlieservaringen, en zorgt met een minimum aan middelen echt elke beluistering weer voor een nieuwe brok in mijn keel. Niet dat de vorm overeenkomt met de andere twee, maar inhoudelijk, gevoelsmatig en intellectueel lijkt Fennesz op exact dezelfde locatie te verkeren als Hollis en Sylvian. Op het eind van Venice laat hij ons nog even schrikken met een stuk harde gitaarnoise, maar ook die passage blijkt na nadere bestudering hoogst essentieel te zijn; immers, schoonheid is alleen maar te ontdekken wanneer het tegendeel ook gedefinieerd kan worden. Indrukwekkend blijft dan hoe hij vanuit de noise op compleet natuurlijke wijze langzaam overvloeit in alweer een warm bad van wonderschone glitchklanken, waarin nog steeds diezelfde noisegitaar ergens ver weg is verstopt. Venice is nog veel meer dan we ooit hebben durven dromen. [Bas Ickenroth]

Pop Matters (USA):

Click! Take a snapshot of early '90s Vienna. In a rock club, there is a familiar sight to the natives in the know. On stage is a lean, guitar-wielding ectomorph, singing and craning over his instrument for blissful sparks of dissonance, even as the rest of his band wails along to the joyful noise. Back to the future, 2004: the digital music scene is in full stream. That same Austrian musician, Christian Fennesz, once attempted his first trials with electric guitar in Maische, a band quite fond of the ideal being used at the time of heavy effects and splintering the sounds of the guitar itself. He quickly became disillusioned with being in a rock band, and moved on to using his computer as scalpel; plucking bits of chords produced from his Fender, and expanding them into long form instrumentals of staggering depth. This became his first EP, appropriately titled Instrument. Fennesz formed a new template then, and many people have followed his directive since. Since so many have discovered the ease of becoming a self-proclaimed computer musician, as if getting the right software can allow one the same talents, his work stands out from many of his contemporaries. He has carefully chosen to restrain the frequency of records he releases, with three years between his newest, Venice, and his last proper full length, Endless Summer. Thankfully, it is well worth the wait. Venice touches on many of the areas often associated with computer-based composition. In various spots, one might find the soothing nature inherent in most ambient-styled music, the now-famous glitch sound of tweaked sound files and broken CDs, and the abstract nature of something disassembled, as if a base sound is being refracted into a thousand pieces of colorful tone. Where Fennesz rises above is in his use of melody and that absorbing warmth he applies to his pieces. He is part of a select few of the current digital dilettantes who successfully fix their crosshairs so intently on mood and emotion. The result is computer music not reserved to the cold harshness so often associated with it, but that breathes, ebbs, and flows. Fennesz has a well-documented fixation on one of his early heroes, My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields. [No he doesn't - ed.] Some of the most engrossing work here plays like that band's between-song moments. His use of digital signal processing (DSP) and synthesizer drones creates such density, such sheer tonal mass, on tracks like the shifting liquidity of "Rivers of Sand" and the absorbing "The Stone of Impermanence", that they work both as minimal background music and deep listening headphone excursions. The digital beehive buzzing here isn't abrasive as in some his earlier work, and doesn't nod to another of his influences, noise artist Merzbow, but instead creates a fecund atmosphere for dream-state and entering inner space. Fennesz still loves the guitar, however. Two of the most moving pieces that really qualify as songs, "Laguna", and "Circassian", feature guest guitarist Burkhard Stangl. In "Laguna", Stangl throws out some bluesy riffs that nod towards Loren Mazzacane Connors, while Fennesz hovers just below the surface with that sometimes-ominous hum heard in those American films from the '50s when a flying saucer is nearly touching the Earth, but not quite. The monster track, "Circassian" (a Circassian is a Sunni Muslim of non-Arab descent), takes things to a whole new level, with a guitar thread that rips like a Eno-Fripp collaboration: part synthetic environment, part axe-wielding on a Hendrix-ian stature. On "Transit", Fennesz invited friend David Sylvian, he of the art-rock band Japan, for a vocal contribution. The song is a dual work, with Sylvian's voice interacting as another instrument would in an improvisation. "Transit" is foreboding, hinting at the end days, and coupled with Fennesz's insertion of some minor digital explosions, it ultimately spells out a dark tale. While his roster of collaborators over the years reads like a laundry list of envelope-pushers in experimental and electronic circles, Fennesz is at his best when at the helm. Venice gives a peek at his enduring penchant for pop, shows him breaking out into other areas of digital territory, and allowing his listeners to see the guitar anew, with its most glimmering elements shining like sunlight through cracks in a wall, sharp as diamonds. [Chris Toenes]

Avoir-Alire (France):

Dans le monde cloisonné de l’electronica existe encore un autre monde, parallèle, celui du "laptop", qui réunit des musiciens dont le seul outil de travail est l’ordinateur portable. Le Viennois Christian Fennesz y règne en maître. Depuis Endless summer, album sorti sur le révéré label autrichien Mego en 2002, Fennesz s’est en effet définitivement installé dans le fauteuil de leader charismatique de cette musique a priori anonyme et froide. Mais ce disque, construit en partie sur des "chutes sonores" de chansons des Beach Boys, a prouvé que l’on pouvait émouvoir et même bousculer les émotions d’un auditoire à l’aide d’un simple ordinateur portable. D’ailleurs, le dernier disque live du très prolifique Autrichien, Live in Japan, en est une autre preuve éclatante. Aujourd’hui, Fennesz revient sur le label anglais Touch, toujours à la pointe de l’avant-garde expérimentale et électronique. Venice reprend les mêmes éléments que Endless summer (mélopées abrasives, sons électroniques faits de chutes numériques recyclées et d’accidents sonores), mais va plus loin dans le dépouillement et les nuances. Inexplicablement, le disque scotche l’auditeur attentif, qui se retrouve projeté dans ce monde parallèle, sorte de Venise numérique, où un romantisme désuet côtoie des déferlantes futuristes. Parfois, une voix fend miraculeusment ce mur sonore (celle de David Sylvian, ex-Japan, en l’occurence) sur un Transit au titre évocateur ; parfois, une guitare résiste aux transformations de l’alchimiste, et apparaît presque nue et désemparée (Laguna). Avec Venice, Christian Fennesz continue de tisser une impressionnante toile au sein du monde de l’électronique, et se positionne en véritable référence incontournable pour qui aborde cette musique, à l’instar d’un Brian Eno dans les années 70. [Frankie Clanché]

Barcodezine.com (web):

Christian Fennesz is slowly but surely coming to the attention of the many people who enjoy the glitch/ambient side of electronic music. This is mainly thanks to his particularly well-received 2001 album ‘Endless Summer’, but also due to swathes of favourable press that point towards an already quite substantial back catalogue. ‘Venice’ sees Fennesz continue his experiments into sparse, abstract, rich, yet fairly minimalist, electronica. When I say minimalist, I mean that Fennesz does not clutter his music with percussion or over-elaborate programming, he instead delivers warm atmospheres and settings, layered in muddy blankets of noise that require the listener to concentrate and gaze at their filmlike projections. It’s more akin to art than music, of which the cover photography lays testament to five depictions of moments in time. Like all good ambient albums, when that certain melodic loop is thrown in to the equation it melts into the music and brings your emotions to the fore, and the opening track, ‘Rivers Of Sand’, does precisely that, a beautiful track. ‘Chateau Rouge’ is much the same, but the landscape is dirtier, the noise more fuzzed. Like treading through swampland, you get glued down and fascinated by the mysteriousness of your surroundings and just want to stop and observe it for a while. Fennesz is not interested in delivering soundscapes that make you feel phoney one-dimensional emotions; each track has a different feel, a different attitude, occasionally they leave you confounded. ‘Circassian’ has a cascading sense of ‘something’; its multi-layered guitar and synthesiser feedback and drones loop continuously, leaving you to unravel the picture and apply its raw emotion to yourself in whichever way you see fit. ‘Venice’ is frequently interrupted by short interludes, such as ‘Onsay’, which mixes calmness with an underlying tension remarkably. On ‘Transit’, Fennesz invites David Sylvian to contribute vocals, which gives the album a sudden, clear focus. To be honest, this could easily fit on to Sylvian’s own ‘Blemish’ album, where Fennesz contributed some keyboards. Sylvian carries the melody in his vocal and gives the track a particularly European feel. ‘The Point Of It All’ sees Fennesz give in to the melodic and emotive thrust that hides patiently underneath all of his arrangements, as the track builds into a warm and euphoric landscape that could well have a profound meaning on you at some point in your life. Fennesz varies the album further by including the shredded, guitar strum of ‘Laguna’, and much like the rest of album, it grows on you like creeping ivy. 'Venice is another solid, consistent album from Fennesz that carries it’s own unique stamp of quality. If you enjoyed this review then you’ll enjoy the album.

The Observer (UK):

Ambient hasn’t had much of a profile since the early Nineties, when Aphex Twin was soldering together his homemade gear and making electronica without repetitive beats was a political act. Now we have ‘intelligent dance music’ (aka ‘glitch’ etc), an umbrella term for digital composition that shuns the straitjacket of song in favour of crackle and fizzes that, in the right hands, become emotive soundscapes. Few have abler hands than Christian Fennesz, whose latest album takes up where 2001’s Endless Summer left off. His warm drones, ebbing analogues and dysfunctional digitals recall the sublime bliss-outs of My Bloody Valentine as much as they suggest ghosts in the modern machine. It’s deeply lovely; and for variety, David Sylvian sings on one track, returning the production favour Fennesz did for him on his last record. [Kitty Empire]

Mojo (UK):

- Austrian avant-guitarist and laptop avatar's latest attempt to marry glitch and hook. David Sylvian guests -

Vienna's Christian Fennesz has been a name to drop in esoteric circles since the mid-90's. Endless Summer - 2001's nutty but hugely accessible Beach Boys homage - alerted the wider world to his dual facility for dissonant electronics and lovely, lilting refrains; indeed, Fennesz excels when he squeez

Fennesz "Venice" (continued)

World's of Possibility (Blog):

After 2002’s Endless Summer Fennesz could have wandered further down the idyll-tronica pathway - bucolic pleasures, sparkly spangles of muted rapture, pop motifs floated in a street-side puddle of ambient nothingness. At a certain point that stuff all starts to sound like some Warp-ed vision of the ECM label, polite and restrained, surface-sheen lovely and a bit glossy: untroubled music. With Venice, Fennesz rediscovered the glorious mistiness and uncertain emotional tenor at the heart of his best work. Venice connects more to the wistfulness of “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder”, the exploded spaces and hanging sculptures of sound dotted throughout Live in Japan (a more successful exploration of Endless Summer’s ideas and motifs), at times it even looks back to the wildcard experimentation of plus forty seven degrees 56’37” minus sixteen degrees 51’08”. The album title is a pun on the artist’s name, I suppose, but it also allegorises the record’s precarious structures with the slowly disintegrating city: the great sense of loss that is at the heart of beauty. Venice is highly sensual, and once or twice, it threatens to cross over into the concupiscent; at its most intoxicating it is so overwhelming you positively lose yourself, erased at the point of la petit mort. Music of jouissance? Why not (there is, after all, a great melancholy at the heart of jouissance - the very knowledge that it is always fleeting) - we need more music that deprogrammes the dead-eyed ‘virility’ of what passes for ‘pop’ these days, replacing it with music that valorises the overwhelming giddiness of pop at its most voluptuous and romantic. Perhaps Fennesz isn’t writing the ‘pop songs’, but he’s supplying the fabric, the texture, the erotic drape over the physical presence of great pop music.

(Oh - Did anyone else notice how, on “Circassian”, Fennesz gets remarkably close to the spine-melting amour of early Seefeel?)

Sonidobscuro (Peru):

Desde la década pasada el nombre del austriaco Fennesz inspira respeto debido a la calidad de sus ejecuciones musicales, el último de los cuales lo ha realizado el 2004 y lleva por título Venice (lugar donde grabó el disco) el cual merece la mayor de las atenciones por los seres ávidos de un encuentro con música de calidad. Hablar de Christian Fennesz -hoy productor y guitarrista- es remontarnos a los ochentas cuando empezó a gustar de música electrónica en la vena de Japan, Talk Talk o Heaven 17, aunque lamentablemente en su Viena natal no existía gente interesada en los mismos, por lo que tuvo que tocar guitarra hasta la creación de la banda underground de rock experimental Meische del cual fue fundador, vocalista y guitarrista.

Ya desde los noventas empezó a experimentar con dicho instrumento logrando sonoridades extrañas basadas en mezclas procesadas a través de la tecnología, todos ellos para dos sellos emblemáticos: Mego (label austriaco creado el 1994) y Touch (Inglaterra) en el que está realizando sus últimas producciones como su predecesora joya llamada Fields Recordings. Venice lo inicia 'Rivers Of Sand' el cual nos hizo pensar que andaría por los mismos senderos de su anterior entrega, guitarras procesadas sobre capas sonoras paisajistas, lo cual no se reflejaría con el transcurso de los siguientes temas. Ya con 'Château Rouge' los sonidos se tornan más intimistas, en este nos hace alucinar un ambiente de gotas de cristales al que se une por momentos el sonido de una especie de maquina procesadora con el cual se juega durante el tema. Inmediatamente viene 'City Of Light', puros sonidos de atmósferas extraterrestres en el que pareciera que todo el track fuera hecho de una sola capa, pero una atenta escucha nos llevará hacia las superposiciones de las mismas. Luego de dichos seis minutos treinta le sigue otro track con la misma duración: 'onsra', suerte de retorsiones sonoras que van pululando a lo largo del mismo en los que podemos apreciar ciertos guiños de sonoridad etérea y de ambientaciones repetitivas.

'The Other Face' posee mayor electrónica pero igual de confuso en sus tres minutos, mientras que 'Transit' (único tema cantado) se inicia con choques astrales luego de los que al promediar los cuarenta segundos se escuchará la lírica de Sylvian sobre sonoridades excentricas que asemejan distorsiones vocales. 'The Point Of It All' estremece desde un inicio por su fría composición paisajista para que al promediar los cuatro minutos se empiece a apreciar sonoridades de guitarra acústica. Más rítmico encontramos los guitarreos de Fennesz en el décimo tema 'Laguna' una suerte de slowcore noventero bien hecho al que le seguirá 'asusu' (de segundos) para terminar con 'The stone of impermanence' una suerte de descomposiciones guitarreras con similitud a distorsiones al que le seguirán sonidos más suaves entre los que podemos encontrar al de un cascabel.(?)

Finalmente, no está demás destacar sus principales trabajos en ambos labels, para Mego: el EP en vinilo en 12 pulgadas número 004 (hoy descatalogado): Instrument (1995), y en años consecutivos: Hotel Paral.Lel (1997), The single plays, The magic sound of Fenno´berg (triada compuesta, además, por Peter Rehberg "Pita" y Jim O´Rourke); Endless summer del 2001 y The return of Fenn O´Berg al año siguiente. Para Touch Musicdestacan: Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56´37 minus Sixteen Degrees 51´08" (grabado en su jardín en Austria) de 1999, Live at Revolver, Melbourne de 2000 y Fields Recordings 1995-2002, suerte de compilación de trabajos para películas, remixes y el EP: Instrument. También, el 2003 se lanzó su Live in Japan -mediante el sello Headz- y la colaboración con Sylvian en el track 'A fire in the Forest' del disco del ex-Japan, lo cual se retribuiría en el presente Venice.

Brainwashed (USA):

album of the year

1. Fennesz, "Venice"
2. Devendra Banhart, "Rejoicing in the Hands"
3. Sonic Youth, "Sonic Nurse"
4. Coil, "Black Antlers"
5. Animal Collective, "Sung Tongs"
6. Devendra Banhart, "Nino Rojo"
7. Einstürzende Neubauten, "Perpetuum Mobile"
8. Tom Waits, "Real Gone"
9. Pan Sonic, "Kesto"
10. Björk, "Medulla"

betamusic (Singapore):

Three years between albums is a long time in the hyper-real world of experimental electronic music. But that's how long it's taken Austrian wunderkind Christian Fennesz to create a followup to 2000's groundbreaking Endless Summer. Venice is Fennesz's fourth studio full-length album, and, already on first impressions, a very important addition to his canon. The laptop composer had been kept busy in the three years, not just with touring but also with remixing and musical collaborations. So it's a supreme delight that Venice comes across as an unhurried, and attentively crafted work. Continuing the playful dalliance with pop first sampled on Endless Summer, Venice is pretty and accessible. "Rivers of Sand", the album's opening track tacks cavernous bass notes to sheets of feedback. "The Other Face" offers up another surprise--vocal samples were never a staple in Fennesz's music--but here they flit in and out of a repeated cycle of buzzing like disembodied spirits in search of release. The album's two highlights, depending on your preference, would either be "Circassian" or "Transit". Fans of Fennesz are always able to hear the latter's My Bloody Valentine fixation. Well, they would thrill to "Circassian", a manipulation of mutated power chords that wouldn't feel out of place on Isn't Anything. On the other hand, "Transit" features David Sylvian on vocals, and locates its still, focussed beauty on a lone organ. Quite obviously, Fennesz is a musician who's not afraid to spend as much time as he needs fashioning melodies and pursuing that perfect texture. For that unique quality alone, we should be grateful. [Lee Chung Horn]

Urb (USA):

Brainwashed (USA):

Try as I might, I can never come to an understanding of the fascination so many have with Christian Fennesz. His 2001 record, Endless Summer, never touched me in the same way it seemed to touch numerous critics and fans; even repeated listens could not cure the inertness I felt while listening to the music. Put simply: I've always found Fennesz's albums overrated and tame. That's why it came as a surprise to find Venice impressing me on some levels. As a whole the record drags on just as much as its predecessors have, but there are a few songs on the album that come out of left field and strike me to a degree that I could never have expected. The opener, "Rivers of Sand," is a pulsating work full of struggling chords and bereft melodies that disappear mysteriously only emerge triumphantly on the other end of death as some fizzling and hissing memory more powerful than before. The combination of highly-processed sound and near-pure flourishes resonates in a way that few other songs from this composer ever have. Between songs like "River of Sand" and "Circassian" are pieces that fail to evoke any happiness or intrigue in me. "City of Light" is a moaning exercise in patience that never touches on the promise of its title. While there is some peace to be found in the slowly morphing chords processed and reprocessed by Fennesz, there are few significant or lavish sounds that make continued listening a joy. Everything sounds like it is a little too perfectly in its place. Where Venice succeeds is in its more bare and acoustic moments. "Circassian" emenates an ebb and flow in the electronic realm that suggests wind-swept plains and ancient civilizations. But just below that ebb and flow is a distinct and gorgeous strumming, something for the present and familiar that sinks into my skin and makes the unknown an appreciable entity. "Laguna" works for the same reason - it's a track dominated entirely by an acoustic guitar, but with one mild and completely endearing electronic effect: a bad mic. If Fennesz is capable of melody and beauty as great as this, why he is concentrating on distortion and laptop trickery is beyond me. With the highlights safely out of the way, I can still express my confusion about Fennesz's supposed brilliance. There is no doubt in my mind that he is a gifted individual and that is capable of producing some excellent music, but the bulk of Venice suggests to me that he hasn't even begun to tap his abilities as a writer and performer. I have no doubt that this will be hailed as another incredible record and that fans everywhere will absolutely adore this record, but until Fennesz gets very experimental and takes a chance at a nearly unedited, unprocessed, acoustic record, I'll be getting my kicks elsewhere. [Lucas Schleicher]

Brian Eno’s founding maxim about ambient music was that it should be “as ignorable as it is interesting”. If this is a sufficient condition for a great record – then Fennesz has entered the arena of the truly wonderful. Like a musical Derren Brown, this album always seems to know what you are thinking and never fails to work its atmospheric magic in any situation where you find yourself listening to it. This is only Christian Fennesz’s fourth album in seven years; clearly great art takes time. Opening tracks “Rivers Of Sand” and “Chateau Rouge” pulsate with warm ambient loveliness and creak with sonic static electricity, while “Circassian” has a mildly unsettling My Bloody Valentine-esque drone that sounds as if it about to implode under its own emotional intensity, and David Sylvian croaks along to “Transit” sounding like Nick Cave. There is not a single track to find fault with here, this is a truly lovely record. And if the music doesn’t float your particular boat, Venice is almost worth owning just for the dreamy cardboard CD case with absolutely stunning photographs; another example of great cover art (which seems to be the Touch label policy - presumably an effort to stem the tide of downloading). This is a record that you should not only download, you should also own an original for yourself, and while you are at it buy one for somebody else in your life whose lot you would like to improve just a little bit… [Ed F]

Boomkat (Web):

'Venice' is the official follow up to the groundbreaking 'Endless Summer', a record with a legendary pedigree and with sales substantial enough to have shaken up its label (Mego) to the extent that they seem to have been on a mission ever since to keep it as difficult as it gets. It seems Touch has no such hangs up. This is an amazing album that will no doubt come to be as highly regarded as 'Endless Summer' though musically its a much more varied affair, reflected by the contrasting imagery in the digipak photography (an old and new rowing boat moored up / nature and classic architecture reflected through water / an ice bound airport / an evening shot of a weir). Check the heartbreak rushing melancholy of the opener 'Rivers Of Sand' to the somewhat playful 'Chateau Rouge' then the freeze framed longing of 'City Of Light'. 'Circassian' featuring the searing guitar of Burkhard Stangl will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. The justifiable hyped up collaboration with David Sylvian is as you'd expect, upfront confessional lyrics behind the buzz and hum of plucked electrical wirings and trapped angels - amazing. My personal favourite is 'The Point Of It All' which has the most beautiful harmonies you'll have heard close up all year plus the tempo and mood shifts. The most brutal track on display 'The Stone Of Impermanence' rounds out this collection in a pure Mego rush of ear splitting intensity but still with that essential Fennesz melodic undergrowth. This is one essential album... if you've not already bought this wondrous album, you need to do so without delay. Truly life enhancing music.

2004 Year End Inclusions:

www.neumu.net:

Venice, which somehow manages to sound like an aural translation of string theory. Or any other spatial theory that a layman like me can't hope to understand. Each song is connected by a strange, enveloping glue that makes everything sound as peaceful as the wading paddle-boat on this album's cover. The whole thing is a bit Zen I suppose, but Fennesz manages to dodge any hint of a new-age vibe with his churning chord theatrics. Every now and then an especially high wave of guitars will linger (as on the grand "Cirassian") only to eventually fade back into the ambient ocean. A touchstone of subtle brilliance.

www.popmatters.com:

Pay attention to Christian Fennesz. He is at the forefront of music's future, foiling computer brushstrokes with his undying love of pop. On Venice, he ups the ante, allowing his pieces to ebb and flow, like its namesake's watery environs. Fennesz is one of the few current digital dilettantes to fix his mouse on mood and emotion. Guitarist Burkhard Stangl's blues-ish riffing adds extra soul to what is usually a cold computer world. On "Circassian", (named for Sunni Muslims of non-Arab descent), the guitar rips like an Eno-Fripp collaboration, both synthetic calm and Hendrix pyrotechnics. On "Transit", former Japan vocalist David Sylvian's lament hints at Europe's end days. Fennesz never left the guitar; appropriately, he's recently returned to using one onstage. Venice is one of the great modern electronic works; refracting deftly embedded melody into a thousand pieces of colorful tone, the guitar's lines shining like sunlight through cracks in a wall, sharp as diamonds. [Chris Toene]

www.coolfer.com/blog/

Fennesz: Venice (Touch, March 22nd) The textures on Venice, the latest ablum by experimental electronic artist Christian Fennesz, grabbed my attention like few albums this year. It's a beautiful suite of ambient music. David Sylvian lends vocals to the song "Transit." When given the time, a listen to Venice from start to finish is really the only way to enjoy it.

www.jackpot records.com

JACKPOT RECORDS BEST OF 2004 RECOMMENDATION!! This record stops just shy of teasing listeners, as it shifts back and forth from tremendously emotional melody to static hiss. Like crying and trying to focus on your best friend's face, the momentary clarity of blinking away tears slowly obscured as your eyes fill back up. As difficult as it is beautiful, this record ought to sound just as heartachingly necessary five, even fifty, years from today.

THE CMG 2004 YEAR-END EXTRAVAGANZA: TOP 50 COMBINED RATINGS OF 2004

http://www.cokemachineglow.com/2004/combined/30-21.html

If you knew Fennesz, if you loved Fennesz, and if you were advising your friend on how to try out Fennesz, the answer would always be: “start with his latest album.” Of course, putting the words “try out” alongside “Fennesz” is immensely absurd. You don’t try out Fennesz albums. You worm your way into them, you inhabit them for days, and then you come out musically reborn. It took me at least a dozen close, uninterrupted listens, and twice that many cursory listens, to understand, appreciate and eventually love Endless Summer when that was Fennesz’s most approachable album. Venice has now taken over that title - but thankfully Fennesz’s (infinitesimally) growing “accessibility” has not taken away from the beauty of his works. [Amir Karim Nezar]

pitchformedia.com (USA):

While Jóhann Jóhannsson launched chilly air-born arias in 2004, fellow Touch artist, Parisian/Viennese electro composer and guitarist Christain Fennesz, turned-in a cavernous, reverberating My Bloody Valentine riverbed streaming with stringed miscellany and soft-cornered static. Fennesz is most most hypnotic when his instrumentation's unidentifiable. On his first studio album since 2001's Endless Summer, he evokes waterlogged, crystalline interiors and - quite magically - his opaque formula remains equally diffuse. Hyperbole aside, the only misstep is "Transit" and its tremulous vocal harmonies; but in its wake Fennesz wisely submerges the listener back into the murky instrumental depths for the album's remaining four tracks. Complementing this dark blue geography, labelhead Jon Wozencroft's accompanying photos of pitch-black ocean loam, shivering curlicues of an icy airport, peeling salty boats anchored into shadows, and the prosaic world dispersed through reflective water, unpack Venice's quiet beauty better than anything written on the album thus far. [Brandon Stosuy]

betamusic (Singapore):

Three years between albums is a long time in the hyper-real world of experimental electronic music. But that's how long it's taken Austrian wunderkind Christian Fennesz to create a followup to 2000's groundbreaking Endless Summer. Venice is an unhurried, and attentively crafted work. Continuing the playful dalliance with pop first showcased on Endless Summer, Venice is pretty and accessible. "The Other Face" has vocal samples, never a staple in Fennesz's music, flitting in and and out of a drone-buzz like disembodied spirits in search of release. Venice also breaks new ground. "Rivers of Sand", the album's opening track tacks cavernous bass notes to sheets of feedback. Also, "Transit" features David Sylvian on vocals, and locates its still, focussed beauty on a lone organ. The texture, the texture!

Dagsavisen (Norway):

På toppen av elektronika-haugen 2004 ligger denne plata fra østerrikeren Christian Fennesz. Som et av ny elektronisk musikks mest anerkjente navn er det underlig at hans nye album ikke har fått skandinavisk distribusjon før nå. Særlig ikke siden hans forrige album «Endless Summer» (2001) ble genierklært over store deler av den vestlige verden.

Christian Fennesz startet som gitarist i et eksperimentelt rockband, men som soloartist har han utforsket kombinasjonen gitar og laptop, og utviklet et helt eget og innflytelsesrikt sound. Han legger lag på lag med lyder og klanger i rike, men samtidig direkte og emosjonelt ladede komposisjoner. Og han tar seg god tid, «Venice» er hans fjerde soloalbum siden 1995. Innimellom har han samarbeidet med vidt forskjellige artister som Jim O Rourke og norske Geir «Biosphere» Jenssen, og i 2003 var han med på det modige comebackalbumet til David Sylvian, som er gjestevokalist her. Plata er hovedsakelig spilt inn i Venezia, og på sin abstrakte måte maler Fennesz et nattfarget lydbilde av døsige bølger som slår over restene av forgangen europeisk kultur.

Sylvians distinkte stemme preger den eneste vokallåten på «Venice»; «Transit», som ligger midt på plata som et punkt hele albumet dreier seg rundt («say your goodbyes to Europe/swallow the lie of Europe/our shared history dies with Europe»). Mange holder «Endless Summer» som Fennesz' beste, med sine muterte Beach Boys-inspirerte gitarsløyfer; «Venice» er på mange måter vel så interessant, den er dypere og mørkere og mer utfordrende. Fotografiene og designet på cd-omslaget kommuniserer med musikken på en slik måte at opplevelsen ville blitt fattigere som ren lyd. Slik sett er «Venice» også en seier for det truede cd-formatet.

disquiet.com (USA):

Christian Fennesz can build small cities from things as slight as glitches, hum and over-amplified guitar, and this album collects a dozen examples of his soundcraft: the orchestral depth of "The Point of It All"; the vibrant chaos of "The Stone of Impermanence," with a melody buried deep in its core; the buzzing liveliness of "Circassian." One highlight is "Transit," a vocal track featuring singer David Sylvian (following up Fennesz's work on Sylvian's Blemish from last year); it's like a Wim Wenders film condensed to under five minutes.

Village Voice (USA):

With all the excitement of watching an office temp download a Paris Hilton clip at his cubicle, that upside-down glow of the Apple logo illuminates most Powerbook performers as tedious enough to make Kraftwerk look like the Scorpions. That chin-scratching audiences could discern a G3-tar plucking ditties inside the dizzying katydid clicks of Austrian rock guitarist-turned-laptopper Christian Fennesz's 2001 breakthrough album, Endless Summer, popped him out of the noise crowd, rendering him commercially viable as computer music's first guitar god.

Rather than follow it up, Fennesz globe-trots with Jim O'Rourke and Pita, the Polwechsel quartet, Sparklehorse, or ex-Japan crooner David Sylvian, or else remixes the jiggy-sissy Junior Boys and the im-Material Girl herself. He also trots out those most rote of rock maneuvers, an odds-and-sods comp (Field Recordings 1997–2002) and a live album—from Japan, no less!—echoing the dinosaurs that once rocked the earth: Cheap Trick's Live at Budokan, Deep Purple's Made in Japan, even the Scorps' own Tokyo Tapes.

Shunning pyrotechnics and fiery leads, Fennesz instead cops the licks of other '70s guitar heroes: Fripptronic components bob in a watery tub of dub as Florian Fricke's acoustic balances precariously above. The cherry wood warps as erratic jolts of electricity course through his shriveled fingertips, drowning out half-formed melodies in washes of white noise. Pastoral musings distend as they get sucked down the drain, and though it doesn't really rock like a hurricane, it churns like one. Hyped as the greatest laptop concert ever (though his Live in Detroit boot is more visceral), Live in Japan simply updates arena-rock formula: download and deliver hits, saving catchiest number code ("Shisheido") for encore.

After album-length postcards of places such as Barcelonan pensiones, Australian tourist traps, and his backyard coordinates, Fennesz recorded the entirety of Venice in . . . you guessed it. Rested and ready, it's his most complacent disc yet, less concerned with pushing envelopes than having something to say beyond "Wish you were here." That voice in "Transit" is Sylvian in correspondence, tilting the album toward Scott Walker country. "Circasian" has all the majesty of San Marco Basilica drones with none of the swarming pigeons. Multiple dimensions of melody get compressed to oily surface tension. Notes are motorless, impermanent; they merely float and reflect the glimmer of the sinking city's capillary action. [Andy Beta]

Neural (Italy):

Distillati fremiti, eleganti dissonanze, accordi struggenti: le atmosfere della Venezia di Fennesz ricordano in qualche modo le suggestioni sontuose e decadenti, splendidamente descritte da Thomas Mann e poi rese in immagini, altrettanto sofisticate, nel celeberrimo film di Luchino Visconti. Tutto in questa raffinata produzione, nonostante la contemporaneità dei suoni, riporta ad un senso di nostalgia, di perdita, allo stesso modo le astrazioni, nelle strutture estremamente sperimentali, sbandano verso pulsioni descrittive. Un doppio binario, melodia ed elettronica, ricerca colta e facile gioco emozionale, facendo vibrare la voce sensuale di David Sylvian, ad esempio, in 'Transit', unica traccia non strumentale, quasi un appendice di 'Blemish', ultimo atto dell'ex pop-star poi convertita verso sponde concettuali comunque molto fruibili. Una sorta di romanticismo più, pervade questi solchi, romanticismo più ambient, più post-rock, più glitch, più laptop music, più tecnica strumentale e digitale. Innovazione, stile personalissimo e un senso immanente delle cose sembrano far parte di un unico progetto e molto a questo proposito ci racconta anche il curatissimo artwork della confezione, ad opera di Jon Wozencroft: due barche ma la foto sembra quasi irreale, palazzi riflessi nell'acqua che potrebbero essere deformati da un effetto digitale, un'immagine informale, sottacendo però fluidi riverberi di natura. Fatto ad arte, verrebbe da dire, con molta arte e conoscenza (e vorrei, se possibile, che questa affermazione non sia considerata un'allusione sulla qualità del prodotto, inequivocabilmente altissima). Toni evocativi, paesaggi visionari, tensioni mantenute sospese, un aria malinconica a fare da sfondo, un disco osannato da molti, splendidamente in bilico nella pretesa di traghettare il nuovo che avanza verso stati di sensibilità maggiormente condivisibili anche da un pubblico meno avvezzo alle avanguardie. [Aurelio Cianciotta]

misak (Turkey):

e|i (USA):

A very great deal has already been written about this record, and little remains for the present reviewer except to either add another voice to the chorus of praise and wonder or to dissent. Despite the attractions of contrariness, the only possible choice is the former. There is no other glitch album, and precious few albums of any kind, that can lay claim to the kind of subtlety, charm, warmth, and splendor of Austrian sound designer and guitarist Christian Fennesz’ album of last year, his tribute to the city of Venice. Indeed, one of the very few to come close is Fennesz’s previous album, the Beach Boys tribute Endless Summer. As on that album, Venice’s smeary surfaces are largely products of manipulating the electric guitar, sometimes gently, elongating and reverberating riffs into tinnily clanging echo-chambers, and at other times so completely that the source sound is unrecognizable. An analog from the visual arts to Fennesz’s work on eleven of these twelve woozily shimmering tracks (David Sylvian’s prominent vocal contribution to “Transit” renders it a different kind of beast altogether) would be the most abstract paintings of impressionist Claude Monet, with the key difference that whatever programmatic content, whatever “subject,” there may be to these tracks is hidden, except in the song titles, which are opaque (e.g., “The Point of it All,” “Rivers of Sand”). That the one vocal track on the album, the aforementioned “Transit,” is a kind of love-song and farewell to a vanished Europe, can’t help but cast the rest of the album in that light however, and Venice is, after all, a sinking city. There is an elegiac, haunting, always-already disappearing quality to Venice, which adds heft to its dreaminess, and poignance to its beauty. [Matthew Marten]

Magnet (USA):

Fennesz "Live In Japan" reviews

This CD was one of the albums of the year in The Wire (UK), 2003

em411.com:

Recorded live at Shibuya Nest, Tokyo in February of this year, "Live in Japan" has to be one of the most impressive electronic performances I've ever heard. The Japanese media even said that Austrian artist Christian Fennesz is "one of the finest laptop performers". From this 43 minutes listening experience I must say that it's true.

This continuous set (the album has only one track) blends chopped-up and remixed extracts from his previous album "Endless Summer" and pushes these songs even further in depth and textures. Subtle melodies and samples bring seas of textures from one song to another; Fennesz's pop sensibility is streched and manipulated in improvised noise. The set is clearly improvised as you can easily notice that Fennesz doesn't just "cue" tracks one after the other. The set is slowly constructed, evolving into a moutain of drones, fused into bright and complex layers of noise. After going back into calm melodic moments, the noise brings us to "Shisheido" from Endless Summer before going to the encore.

A vibrant performance that will captivate you from the begining to the end, "Live in Japan" falls under one of the best records (in my book) released in 2003. Classic. Amazing digipak design by Jon Wozencroft.

Chuck Crow:

This album is awesome, so I figured I’d point it out in case you haven’t already heard it. This release has been out for a while - it’s not new, but it’s worth mentioning.

[Just going on raw probabilities, chances are you wouldn’t like Fennesz’s music because he is not photographed in glossy magazines brandishing guns, has not been shot 6 times, and does not star in a crappy movie coming out in which he states, “they can’t lock me up for sellin’ records” (or at least I’m unaware if he is). Nor does he resemble Britney in all her retarded glory.]

So anyway, what do you get when Fennesz essentially remixes his phenomenal “Endless Summer” during a live performance? Well, you get this recording, which took place at Shibuya Nest on Feb 9th, 2003. What’s presented here is one ~45 min piece that meanders all over Endless Summer.

Surely the word “remix” conjures up some DJ Crapola’s cut and paste restructuring of some Depeche Mode song in Garage Band. I use “remix” here to mean the following: Fennesz approaches”Endless Summer” from a conceptually different angle. The final result differs enough to stand on its own two feet. In addition, the album artwork features more of Jon Wozencroft’s amazing photography found on most Touch releases.

Since I’m a very busy and important man, it’s easier for me to copy and paste a summary from forcedexposure.com:

Japanese-only release on the newly developing Headz imprint, in a striking digipak designed by Jon Wozencroft. “Four years after his first performance in Japan in 1999 with Mego, this album is a solo live recording of his latest show in Tokyo. This recording features the full show that took place on February 9, 2003 at Shibuya Nest in Tokyo including the encore, and has been praised by many as the greatest laptop live show in music history. This album is officially approved by the Touch label in the UK, which Fennesz is now signed to. Listen to this mind blowing historical document where you can actually feel a packed club being overwhelmed by Fennesz`s cutting edge and radical pop sensibilities. With his participation on David Sylvian`s album Blemish (Sylvian is featured on Fennesz`s album Venice in return), the amount of international attention that Fennesz is receiving seems to be growing exponentially. His attention is not growing linearly, it’s growing exponentially!! I’m not sure if it is a “mind blowing historical document”, like, say, the Declaration of Independence or Howard Stern’s autobiography, but it’s a great record nevertheless.

The Sound Projector (UK):

Another deliriously enjoyable piece of music from this great electronica ‘superstar’. Last issue the compilation Field Recordings persuaded me that Fennesz was somehow at his best with short, snappy tracks of fizzing sampladelica, and that maybe underneath it all he was a frustrated popstar releasing 2-minute singles of abstract pop-noise, and dreaming of Phil Spector and Brian Wilson production values as he gazed into the one-dimensional portal of his laptop screen. Given that there is apparently a semi-serious ambition to make live pop guitar music with Hazard and Philip Jeck, this perception may not be wide of the mark. However, this live in Japan excursion - one single 40 minute piece - perhaps shows another side to CF, his ambition to replicate the sound and feel of an excessive 1970s progressive rock artist. The music here isn’t that far away from Focus, Tangerine Dream and Bill Nelson (of all people!) all jamming together in some 1970s supergroup of soft-core popular progressive noodling. There’s a lot of acoustic guitar samples here, reminding us of CF’s original chosen instrument, and perhaps hinting at his buried desire to return to frustrated dreams of guitar hero-dom not far removed from the solo excursions of William Nelson and Be-Bop Deluxe. (We should be grateful that Nelson, who has notched up not a few excessive and pointless solo studio recordings in his time, never purchased a laptop - although that luxury item may be on his shopping list as we speak). Fennesz’s guitar work is limited to very basic, simplistic and tasteful chordal strums, which accompany the more familiar layered, filtered, distressed and abstracted slabs of digital noise that are one of his signatures. Here he exhibits more skill than before in applying his filters, effects and treatments, yet the overall sound remains determinedly pleasant to the ear. The last 10-15 minutes of this live work (he usually comes to life at the end of a performance, in my experience) achieve the kind of droning meltdown orgasmic high that most musicians would give their right arm for.

In the end, the complexity of this work (if any) resides mainly in the sound - the sonic treatments which grow increasingly rich, unpredictable and filled with micro-dynamic events that the ear will strain to catch; certainly there is little real complexity in the simple guitar chords which change into simple electronic chords via laptop alchemy, nor in the incredibly basic and utterly linear compositional structures. Hence the progressive rock comparisons, which I feel have a little justification. The mysterious coda at end of CD is extremely good though, and more ‘experimental’ in some way...like an additional 10 minutes of bonus art material. Angular and unpredictable sounds jut out of a strange carcass and give that edge of danger so absent from the proceeding deliriously pleasurable but fundamentally unchallenging preceding 35 minutes. And all this is structured around a rich vibraphone sample that is sheer magic! A co-production between Touch and this Japanese label, this release boasts superior sound quality, Japanese packaging with obi, and Jon Wozencroft sleeve design. All of which is a bit like flying to Japan and seeing a red telephone kiosk in the street in Tokyo. [Ed Pinsent]

Grooves (USA):

While Fennesz fans anxiously await Venice, his follow-up to the justly heralded Endless Summer, they can tide themselves over with this majestic recording of a February 9, 2003 performance at Shibuya Nest in Tokyo. While apparently some listeners have described it as "the greatest laptop live show in music history," music of this potency and textural richness hardly requires such hyperbole to argue in its favour. It begins with a churning, industrial haze of electronics and continues for forty-three raw minutes in a stream-like fashion. While snippets of Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56' 37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51' 08", Endless Summer, and 'Codeine' (Fennesz's remix of the Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephan Mathieu track from the duo's superb Heroin) do surface, most appear briefly before being sucked back into the volcanic brew Fennesz concocts. Recognizable elements like the melancholy guitar strummings and vibes of Endless Summer and the organ of 'Codeine' are shredded by an astonishing and relentless array of processing treatments. Yet even when such effects are at their most extreme, Fennesz's unique sensibility ensures that melodic traces will be heard straining towards the surface. At the very moment when the sound threatens to become wholly engulfed by static and noise, the familiar strumming of an acoustic guitar breaks through to provide a stabilizing reference. Presumably he used a predetermined 'set list' to guide himself through the performance, but the feel is definitely organic with ideas unfolding in a natural manner. In conjuring this stunning set, Fennesz maintains a level of invention and intensity from beginning to end that is both exhausting and thrilling. The seeming ease with which he shapes these transitions into a cohesive, grand design is masterful. Conspicuous by its singularity is the brief interlude of silence near the end, after which Fennesz ends this remarkable set with the gorgeous 'Caecilia.' [Ron Schepper]

The Wire (UK):

Running parallel to his excursions on the international improvisors' circuit, Christian Fennesz is also developing a career as laptop abstractionist of choice for more orthodox musicians. First he turns up applying texture to David Sylvian's recent return to form, Blemish. Next, he's set to work with Sparklehorse, arguably one of the more openminded outfits to have emerged from the alt Country boom in the mid-90s. Listening to Fennesz's latest solo release, Live In Japan, it's easy to hear why he has become so popular. Essentially, he offers all the puzzles and adventures of experimental music, but with a more assimilable grasp of melody - and a prominent role for the guitar - than most of his Viennese contemporaries. Live in Japan is a new piece, around 40 minutes long, recorded at the Shibuya Nest, Tokyo, this February. The sound, though, will be familiar to fans of Endless Summer, his studio album from 2001: great fields of soft-edged static; rearing symphonic drones; fragments of balmy guitar melody; unsteady digital editing that, at odds with many of his contemporaries, enhances the aesthetic qualities of his music rather than sabotaging them. The last, especially, is critical to Fennesz's appeal. Rather than succumbing to the multiple disruptive possibilities of Improv, Live In Japan evolves serenely from an opening burst of granular noise towards bucolic resolution. As a result, it often recalls a canny update of the bliss-out chapter of avant rock - My Bloody Valentine circa "To Here Knows When", AR Kane, perhaps even The Cocteau Twins - as much as it does to more obvious contemporaries like Pluramon. The result is quite lovely, and oddly radical in the way Fennesz manipulates pop and rock classicism with affection rather than selfconsciousness. Of course, he's not averse to pranks, as the two Fenn O'Berg CDs with Jim O'Rourke and Peter Rehberg testify. But when he revisits the watery vibes and smudged harmonies of "Caecilia" from Endless Summer - which is more reminiscent of The Beach Boys than his cover of their "Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) - as an encore, what's most striking is the unashamed sentimentality which underpins it. The press release claims the show "has been praised by many as the greatest laptop live show in music history". That's a big call, but it's hard now to imagine one that could be more engaging. [John Mulvey]

Brainwashed (USA):

There are three kinds of human, as you call them. There are the poor doomed huddled masses who are yet to hear Fennesz, cowering in ignorance of the F-able; there are the enlightened who recognise him as a gloriously original experimental musician orbiting spheres way beyond mere progression; then there are total morons who probably waste their time listening to Britpap for lack of any clue whatsoever. The Austrian entity who has totally defined and redefined the interface between overgrown hedge cutting laptop mutation and pick'n'strum guitar beauty played for around forty-six minutes in Japan in the second month of this year. As the summer hit too hot to move, this CD fell into my lucky ol' player on the fifteenth and shimmered with utter perfection. If you didn't dig Endless Summer you are not worth a flick of my fag ash, and I don't even smoke. Chrissy F as his friends almost certainly never call him (I mean have you seen the guy? He looks so serious no one could call him Chrissy F, except maybe that utterly punchable dillweed who tries tosing for Blur) would doubtless not approve of such an irrelevant sentance with parentheses appearing in what is after all supposed to be some kind of description of his latest triumph. Hip Nips (the Jap chaps who clap quiet) hailed the master of cracklepops as the finest laptop performer they had witnessed. Reviewed, it seemed that this was the inevitable hype of the press release, but the disc is ample amplified evidence that this was one sweet shimmer burn of a unique event. Familiar fragments and refrains from Endless Summer are repositioned amongst ever more sundrenched light too bright. Fennesz has shifted his whole unmistakable shtick up a gear here, and made the magnificent Endless Summer seem like a mere rehearsal. If you are one of the enlightened then you know you need this. If you want to elevate beyond the bilge this is the disc to pick, yellow obi 'n' all. Bob Geldof has not been hailing this as the greatest thing he's heard since the Pistols, and Fennesz has never tried to feed the world. How can you tell them it's Xmas time when the summer is endless? [Graeme Rowland]

City Pages (USA):

Like Falco, public health care, and Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio remake, the European phenomenon of the live PowerBook performance hasn't taken very well on American shores. Perhaps in these war-torn times, audiences need a little more shock-and-awe onstage than a guy sitting in front of a laptop can provide. Or maybe the new broken equipment craze that's propelling bands like Wolf Eyes and Nautical Almanac has made it uncool to buy pre-built, unmodified gear. Who knows? All I can say for sure is that at a recent house show here in Minneapolis, New York headliner Chuck Bettis spewed the kind of heart-thrilling noise Merzbow would kill for--and five minutes into his set, there was barely anyone left in the room to hear it. Sure, it was the crowd's loss. But perhaps those deserters afflicted with live-laptop bias should listen to Fennesz's new Live in Japan, which is the most compelling argument for them to shut the fuck up and listen that I've yet to hear. Austrian-based artist Christian Fennesz has already established himself as a preeminent computer musician, meticulously splicing shards of sound and processed guitar into the hazy future-pop of his classic Endless Summer. But where his albums are marked by precise editing and meticulously layered washes of fuzz, Live In Japan captures Fennesz in an improvisational mood, flitting through melodies with the kind of dynamic, turn-on-a-dime shifts that characterize the best that live improv can offer, laptop or otherwise. This shouldn't really be a surprise, since Fennesz regularly takes his PowerBook on the road for solo performances and collaborations with acts like Polwechsel and Fenn O'Berg. Even so, his performance here (presented as a single 43-minute track) is remarkable both in its scope and its consistency: Building up looped melodic phrases into a mass of sound, he then subsumes the whole thing with harsh screeches and crackles. Though the process may sound simple, it takes some skillful manipulation to simultaneously tug those heartstrings and poke them with tiny pins. Each of the several mini-narratives that arises within the set repeatedly pitches melody against noise, order against entropy. The grunting noise that opens the performance slowly unfolds into a pulsing wall of guitar. The hiss of reverberating tape-decayed synthesizers ply themselves against flickering sample-strobes at the 20-minute mark. And at my favorite point in the album, lush organ-drones and finger-picked guitar cap off the first part of the set, variously recalling Ry Cooder, My Bloody Valentine, and early Aphex Twin ambience. There's a marked playfulness throughout the set, as Fennesz drops in teaser samples from his early albums before twisting them into entirely new shapes: It's a knowing wink to the audience, followed by a stealthily concealed middle finger. Toward the last quarter of the record, Fennesz brings things to an emotional pitch, fades entirely to silence, and slowly works back into a splendidly noisy recap of Endless Summer's hauntingly catchy "Caecilia" before fading into quiet fields of pop and crackle. It's a heartbreaking ending that makes a damn good argument for the laptop's rightful place on center stage. And if Fennesz still can't convince the doubters, then it's probably time for the laser light show. [Nick Phillips]

Drowned in Sound (UK):

Christian Fennesz has been ploughing a lonely furrow for quite some time now. I say lonely only because of the stunning uniqueness of his work; while laptop musicians are now a dime a dozen, Fennesz' music transcends the usual pitfalls of such a genre, eschewing technical gimmickry in favour of a distinctly human approach to digital sound. When Fennesz uses a laptop, he does so not to show off his no doubt impressive collection of hardware, nor to create sounds that are deliberately, self-consciously, difficult or abrasive. Instead, he uses the micro-editing possibilites of his technology to expand the emotional pallette afforded him by more traditional instruments. On Fennesz' last original solo release, 2001's Endless Summer, he combined dense, manipulated digital static with calm washes of broken guitar and the occasional stab of warm, breathy organ; it's a fantastic record, certainly one of the best of the recent slew of laptop-based releases, and it achieves its greatness with nary a regular rhythm in sight. Live in Japan, however, goes some way to exceeding the emotionally sharp Endless Summer, protracting that records oscillations to a single, 45 minute ocean of sound. It's impossible to convey just how dense, how thick, this tangle of living, breathing sonic threads really is; in the space of a mere 20 seconds, Fennesz seems to reference Ambient, the radio music of John Cage, his contemporaries, while simultaneously creating a deep sense of space within the fizzes and the crackles. More than anything, Fennesz seems interested in the fallability of technology; his music explodes the innocuous digital sheen that micro-processing is often prone to, allowing error, disassembly, and the odd aural double take to permeate his set. It's quite easy, of course, to forget that this was all conjured during the space of one 45 minute live set in Toyko at the beginning of this year; not one electronic shudder has been tampered with since. It's an incredible achievement, a genuine plethora of sound, fury and fragility, by turns haunting and exultant. Fennesz seems determined to show us the ghost in the machine, and in the process he may well alter our perception of what "experimental" and "popular" music can be. Live In Japan is available by mail-order only at the Touch website.

Pitchfork (USA):

Rating: 8.5
David Berman tosses off an image in his poem "The New Idea" that has been stuck in my head: "beauty blew a fuse." Pulled from the context of the poem, this line gets me thinking about things like Icarus flying too close to the sun or steel driving man John Henry pounding his way through that mountain to his death. It's a line about power, reach, and limitation. I read Berman's words and imagine an aesthetic experience as an electrical impulse carrying so much energy that somewhere, a breaker is tripped, natural limits are exceeded, destruction ensues, and the resulting jumble shows the opposing forces of, well, life. If I had to describe the music Christian Fennesz is making now with a single line, I could do worse than "the sound of beauty blowing a fuse." He started off with other goals. Early Fennesz wound a path through electronic abstraction and then rounded a curve around the time of the "Plays" single that led to his 2001 release Endless Summer. That record was a breakthrough that pointed the way toward a new fusion of guitar melody processed with the limitless textured noise made available via computer. Listening on the bus home from work today Endless Summer sounded even more pop than I remember; once again I was humming the title track, which is actually based on some pretty effective changes. I'm told that on his hard drive Fennesz has a version of his recording of "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)" with Brian Wilson's vocals added on top; someone should write a vocal song to lay over "Endless Summer".

Live in Japan documents a single show recorded in February 2003, and it contains several chopped and processed segments of "Endless Summer", but Fennesz does a lot more here than just cue tracks. Bits of Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56' 37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51' 08" stream past, there's a remix in there along with some scattered Endless Summer quotes, but Live in Japan is Fennesz in freeform mode, floating from one idea the next and finding the common core of energy in his varied approaches. You really could chart the emotional pitch of this set on a graph, as it begins in the middle, climbs to an early, intense peak, slopes down for some quiet contemplation before starting for another crest. The word "symphonic" comes to mind. Japanese label Headz is billing this particular performance as one of the greatest laptop shows of all time. I am not qualified to address that hyperbole, but I can say that Live in Japan is a very good Fennesz album regardless of how and where it was recorded.

Though the prettier aspects of Fennesz' sound appear with some regularity, Live in Japan generally leans toward noisier territory. It's a thick, heavy mix, and there always seem to be spikes of static bouncing against the floating organ chords and acoustic guitar picking. Fennesz has a way of teasing out unexpected sounds from his gear and creating unusual emotional effects. About 2/3 of the way through his set, he constructs a mountain of drone that sounds like the orchestral sweep of Sigur Ros fused with Merzbow, and then in the shadow of this monolith he inserts a plucked guitar processed to sound like a harpsichord, imparting an odd medieval quality that feels completely unplugged from time. That this towering and heroic mass slowly decays into the comparatively stark and desolate "Coedine," his remix of a track by Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephen Mathieu, is a testament to Fennesz' emotional reach. He wisely concludes his set on this high note and breaks for a moment before plugging back in and working noisier bits of "Endless Summer" back into an encore. Fennesz' approach with previous records has been to explore a small number of discrete sound ideas in each track and then assemble the varied results into an album. A lot of the fun of Live in Japan comes from hearing how he moves from one sequence into something completely different (surely time spent improvising as part of Fenn'o'berg was an influence here.) Live in Japan is mastered as one 45-minute track, and though I've never been crazy about this kind of listener coercion (first foisted upon the world with Prince's Lovesexy), it has forced me to consider Fennesz' set as a whole. This record is a finely rendered laptop suite by a master of dynamics and pacing. There are (too?) many people making similar music on their laptops at this moment, but very few are as accomplished as Christian Fennesz. [Mark Richardson]

VITAL (The Netherlands):

Let's hope that Christian Fennesz doesn't need an introduction. Many of his works are landmarks in the world of laptopmusic, maybe with 'Endless Summer' being the biggest one of them all. Fennesz is also a person who plays live a lot and is among the best ones to improvise freely on his laptop. A live solo album was to be expected. Here it is. It was recorded in Japan, in February of this year and released on the Headz label (run by the same guy that did Meme some years ago, let's hope this label is somewhat better organised), of course with permission of Touch, the UK label to which Fennesz is exclusively signed to. The press blurb raves about the best laptop concert ever given. Maybe that is a bit too much, but I must agree we are dealing with not just a very good recording, but also with some great music. Guitar plays a major part in these recordings, with long passages of untreated guitar playing, to which Fennesz adds little bits of his special layerings of processed guitars. Fennesz has his own style of playing (and I mean laptop here), which is not really about cracks and clicks, but rather psychedelic patterns of sounds, fields, more or less aggressive drones, which are real-time filtered and collaged together. In the encore we even are offered a xylophone and Fennesz comes close to the Beach Boys here. Maybe not the best laptop CD ever made, but certainly for a live CD, one of the best around. (Frans de Waard)

Matiere Brut (France):

Christian Fennesz est de retour avec cette fois, non pas un album mais l'enregistrement complet d'un concert donné le 9 février 2003 à Shibuya Nest dans la ville de Tokyo. Fennesz a une rare aisance à improviser en live ce qui légitime grandement la sortie de ce disque, très emprunt de son album studio Endless Summer sorti en 2001 sur le label Mego. Les guitares "non ou peu traîtées", qui ne cachent pas leurs racines pop, jouent un rôle majeur ici, se reposant sur les fines couches superposées de drones et de clics digitaux manipulés en temps réels. Le tout est comme d'habitude finement mis en place, l'évolution du morceau faisant preuve d'une grande sensibilité. Bref, cet enregistement est une brillante démonstration des possibilités de la "musique laptop" en live. [Yann Hascoet]

Geiger (Denmark):

Christian Fennesz had his big artistic breakthrough in 2001 with the album Endless Summer. The release, that with an extreme fine touch for combining cut-up electronic elements, noise and accoustics, that set new standards for how laptop could be utilized, have since almost obtained something near classical status. Since the release, Fennesz has among other things taken advantage of his popularity, working with an amount of musicians within amost all genres. As from his involvement in the improv trio Fenn O'Berg, with Jim O'Rourke and Peter Rehberg, to AMM's Keith Rowe and at last participates Fennesz on David Sylvian's latest album. According to the rumors, the latest cooperation should be with the american indie-group Sparklehorse. Lately Christian Fennesz has concentrated on finishing the follow-up for Endless Summer - Venice, as the album is called should, according to the rumors contain contributions from David Sylvian and is set for release later this year. Untill then, his growing audience would have to pass the time with this live-album, that has been recorded at his lates concert in Japan the 9th of February this year. In a way, the fact to release a live album, particulary with his already huge level of activity, can seem a bit like an idea, driven more from greediness than artistic will. On the other side, the music on the album actually shows something different. Live in Japan contains one long piece, that constantly supplies elements from pieces from earlier albums, as well as new material. In this way, space for a much more simple and less noisy version of the original accoustic-founded title piece from Endless Summer is given. In all, Fennesz has turned down the more aggressive part of his noise-layering, that has been replaced by as well noisy, but much more fluent background of tiny skips. The more fluent result is at the same time confirmed from that a much bigger part of the music are supported by either small accoustic melodies or wide blurry guitar-feedback layers. In spite that Fennesz few places gives away for small passages with white noise, is the atmosphere he creates on Live in Japan much more restrained and melodious than Endless Summer. The cd seems with it's greater simplicity immediately more easy-listening than one is used to - a fact that without doubt will give Fennesz even more listeners - but without artistical compromises are taken. His music works simply just great under these premisses. Live in Japan works, despite the fact that it is a live album, not just a cd with live-recordings of what Fennesz earlier has produced. On the contrary part the music here gets a much more fluent and organic touch, and the well-known tracks here get new blood with more improvised sequences. That Fennesz with the more improvised pieces gives the music a more free and floating touch, the music adds an extra dimension in relation to his studio albums. Live in Japan is in that way a really well done live album, that on the face of it can be compared with his studio album. Wheter it can bear to stand as an independent work, or if this is just a station between two great studio albums, will Fennesz's next album without doubt reveal. Untill then, Live in Japan will undoubtly give us plenty of vitamins for many listenings. [Translated by Jacob Kirkegaard]

Disquiet (USA):

Laptop Concert in a Tokyo Nest: At a club called Shibuya Nest in Tokyo, Japan, on February 9 of 2003, Christian Fennesz, who records under his last name, took the stage with his laptop and let loose three quarters of an hour of sublimation and noise. The event is now available as full-length CD, Live in Japan, from the Tokyo-based label Headz. Aside from one fadeout half an hour in, it's a single continuous piece of music - continuous, but not homogenous by any means. What is beautiful in a familiar way about the recording (the occasional spurts of guitar, the squawking of birdsong, various lyrical samples) is often muffled by layers of static and fuzz. And that static and fuzz, in turn, is often shaped into its own musical material - repeated, for example, until what sounds like interference becomes a riff; the experience is a bit like seeing enormous and threatening clouds overhead come to resemble faces and forms. (Throughout the record, various segments might be recognized by anyone who has heard Fennesz's previous Endless Summer and Field Recordings albums.) His music thrives on its proximity to chaos, which is what makes it sublime. In contrast with cathartic work that openly embraces chaos, his has the detailed beauty of a carefully produced song, though that song may take several listens to hear, and the production several listens more to appreciate. Almost seven minutes into Live in Japan (the disc contains one single track, 43 minutes in length), after a flurry of fuzz has settled down, an acoustic guitar surfaces tentatively to provide a distinct signal. The digital hubbub subsides, soothed like a pack of digital beasts, rabid robot scouts lured to the campfire by the promise of a lullaby. The hisses and crunches that had previously defined the recording seem to coalesce around the guitar, echoing or otherwise complementing the melody that's being plucked and strummed. There's an extent to which these fluctuations and irritants are welcome, since some of the guitar playing sounds like second-rate singer-songwriter mush. Twenty minutes or so in, as an electric guitar emerges, again it's downright enticing how peculiar particulate sounds - bleeps like terse foghorns, scintillate like amplified fireflies - mesh with the guitar. On first listening, the noise can be little more than a distraction. But Fennesz has the unique ability to suggest an interplay between what is foreground and what is background, and how those two merge into one thick moment is what makes Live in Japan worth sitting through repeatedly. So heat up some sake, dim the lights, and sink in. [Marc Weidenbaum]

(Belgium):

Hij was lang aangekondigd maar het bleef maar wachten op de nieuwe van Christian Fennesz. Eerst zou die in het voorjaar uitkomen, dan in het najaar en dan was er niks. Naar het schijnt is hij nu al in omloop en te beluisteren ergens op het internet en naar het schijnt is hij heel goed. Weten wij veel! Om de leemte op te vullen, was er dan toch die zeer succesvolle samenwerking met ene David Sylvian. Deze Japanse liveregistratie was ook niet mis. ‘Live In Japan’ klonk een stuk agressiever en pittiger dan de studioalbums, die voorafgingen, maar steeds melodieus. Fennesz op zijn best dus! [Peter Wullen]

Fennesz "Field Recordings 1995-2002"

Pitchfork Media (USA):

Kendah El-Ali reports:
A must-have for all hardcore fans of experimental electronic explorations (and we know you're out there), Fennesz's 2002 collection Field Recordings 1995-2002 was a wet dream of previously unreleased cuts, vinyl-only recordings, soundtrack snippets, and compilation tracks. It's been out of print for awhile, but not for long: on November 8, Touch will reissue the disc. No bonuses or extras or anything, just Field Recordings in all of its glitchy, droney glory.

Often compared to Seefeel or Experimental Audio Research, Austrian sound scientist Christian Fennesz is best known for his 2001 album Endless Summer, allegedly a reflection on the Beach Boys. The material on Field Recordings mostly predates Endless Summer, and it includes "Instrument", his debut 12" for the Mego label, tracks from comps on Mille Plateaux and Ash International, as well as various remixes and a brand new song, "Good Man".

As Pitchfork's own Mark Richardson put it in his original review, it's a "highly appealing hodgepodge."

Tracklist:

01 Good Man
02 Instrument 1
03 Instrument 2
04 Instrument 3
05 Instrument 4
06 Betrieb
07 Menthol
08 Surf
09 Stairs
10 Invend00
11 Namewithnohorse
12 Odessa
13 Codeine

Fennesz currently has a collaborative DVD with artist Jon Wozencroft in the works entitled Liquid Music, which is tentatively scheduled for a February release on Touch. He has one live appearance planned, on November 4 2005 at the Recession festival in Aarhus, Denmark alongside Pita, Grayskul and the newly reunited Cannibal Ox

The New York Times (USA):

Fennesz is an Austrian producer and guitarist who makes sublime, stately compositions out of hovering melodies and white noise. This disc gathers rare and unreleased music from the last seven years; there's plenty of variety here, but the mood of blissful tranquillity remains, even when Fennesz is manipulating jagged shards of sound. "Menthol" juxtaposes a deep, glimmering drone with little eruptions of static on the surface. And on "Codeine," the disc's final track, the sonic cobwebs part slightly, and you can make out the soothing sound of a guitar being strummed. [Kelefa Sanneh]

The Sound Projector (UK):

A very useful and desirable comp of diverse cuts by the Fennery fellow, some of which are hard to come by - covering a five year period (astonishing to think he's been around that long, eh?) this includes the Instrument EP in its totality, plus Christian's contributions to other compilations, film soundtracks, along with remixes and what are laughingly called 'special projects', plus an unreleased cut from the vaults called 'Good Man'. This is a long-overdue goodie and a real treat for fans. Despite the title of course there are no 'field recordings' by way of environmental documents made in the middle of a countryside meadow, but the conceit reminds us that although all flesh is as grass, Fennesz's work has not aged and still comes up smelling as fresh as a bale of new-mown hay. Jon Wozencroft's cover images of a tractor, wooden fence and field of crops does nothing to contradict this notion. After the exceptionally powerful opener 'Good Man', we have all four tracks from Instrument, a belter of a disc which I think was Fennesz's first record and one of the earliest MEGO 12" releases. Wow. It exhibits CF's sharp genius right upfront - everything we have since associated with him seems to have been in place from the start. Here it is in the raw, wild buzzsaw drones and crazy distorted guitar noise - only back then he used a fairly conventional drum track, an element which has since been ditched in favour of his far more unrestrained approach, free-flowing fields of arrhythmic free noise.

Well, so much for the first five cuts. The rest of the comp can seem a bit disparate and throwaway after that strong opening. 'Betrieb' is a remix version by Ekkehard Ehlers for a Mille Plateaux release of that name, and Ehlers performs a small miracle by softening the overall range of frequencies and making Fennesz sound positively romantic. Maybe not a major miracle; there's always been this altruistic side to CF (the nice guy out of the meanie Mego gang) and Ehlers somehow cultivates it electronically. Both 'Stairs' and 'Odessa' are soundtracks plucked from a movie called Blue Moon, the former a short episode with a glutinous, cloying atmosphere, the latter a subterranean exploration suggesting pearl divers in the ocean. 'Codeine' finds acoustic guitar joining the laptoppery confections - very pleasing effect indeed - mingling with that powerful distressed surface which CF has made all his own, like musical notes being blown away in a strong wind. 'Ivend00' is punchier, with a controlled explosion of nasty static splinters and other micro-blip events, all combined in the mosaic style, instead of with the usual broad well-charged electronic paintbrush.

For some reason this is one of the strongest Fennesz sets ever released - maybe he works best with short, single tracks, where he can pour everything he's got into one intense burst of layered energy. Live recordings, and the much vaunted Endless Summer are great things in their way, but even they can seem slightly dissipated and washed-out in comparison to this. Hear Fennesz at his muscular best on Field Recordings! [Ed Pinsent]

City Pages (USA):

Call it the Prince-Alone-in-His-Studio Syndrome: Electronic musicians, when confronted with a panel of shiny knobs, tend to spend more time twiddling with them than using them to actually express something. Sure, it takes a clever studio engineer to wire a mixer together so that it amplifies its own feedback into a bevy of screeches and hums. But, as Toshimaru Nakamura proved with his classic No-Input Mixing Board, it takes a true artist to sculpt said screeches into a gorgeous wash of primordial pulsations. Which explains why Austrian laptop mangler Christian Fennesz is such a precious commodity. Though his basic songwriting method (upsetting pop structures with woozy computer processing) has remained essentially unchanged over the course of three albums and countless collaborations, his music's emotional returns continue to build, culminating in the stunning melancholia of last year's Endless Summer and the surprisingly adroit tonal studies of his recent FatCat 12-inch. On his newest CD, which collects his earliest songs alongside later film scores and compilation contributions, Fennesz assembles a portrait of the artist as a young man that's also a blistering work of art in itself. Anyone who came to Fennesz's music through the Beach Boys-refracted lens of his Endless Summer is in for a surprise. In place of that album's meticulously fractured xylophones and synthesizers is a refreshingly epic take on My Bloody Valentine's wall-of-sound blast-off. The four songs collected here from Fennesz's long out-of-print 1995 EP Instrument layer dense, almost industrial guitars over hectic drumbeats, all to dizzying effect. But fans of Fennesz's later work can rest assured: The more recent selections from Field Recordings veer from glitched-out academic pop to minimal sound design to the almost bombastic film score for Andrea Maria Dusl's fairytale love story Blue Moon. Within these tracks is the blueprint for Fennesz's fragile, blunted lyricism. For instance, "Good Man," an unreleased song of unspecified age, is like a collision between academic sound design and tremulous pop. With a bed of soft pops and fizzes that gradually give way to waves of processed synthesizer and hissing guitars, the song shows its Iannis Xenakis-inspired experimentalism. And yet it still has an emotional tenor that could bring lesser men - like me - to tears.

Echoes (Germany):

Ah, Fennesz. Mag ich sehr gern. Schön, dass der wieder mal was von sich hören lässt. “Field Recordings 1995:2002" also. Mhm. Feines Cover-Artwork von Jon Wozencroft. Compilation, so wie's aussieht. Outtakes, Raritäten, die vergriffene “Instrument"-EP, Stücke von dem Film “Blue Moon", na ja, mal anhören. Mhm, ja, sehr fein. Gewohnte Kost, nix wirklich Neues. Aber was er macht, das kann er halt, der Chris, na ich werd' mal die obligaten 7.5 Punkte vergeben und ein paar Zeil... Moment! Was war DAS? Muss mal lauter drehen. Der letzte Track. ’Codeine'. Noch mal. Das ist ja... unglaublich. Unbeschreiblich. Großartig. Und noch mal. Ich muss mich hinlegen. Die Augen schließen. Genießen. Diese wunderbaren Akkordwechsel auf der Akustikgitarre, die so schwerelos zwischen den Nebelfetzen aus dem Powerbook driften, ruhig, entspannt und mit unendlich viel Raum, um sich auszubreiten. Wahnsinn. Ein tiefer, dunkelblauer Bergsee, inmitten einer hellgrünen Wiese über der sich die Morgennebel lichten. Sieben Minuten, die endlos so weitergehen könnten. Ein unbeschreiblich schönes Stück Musik. Wahrscheinlich das beste, das Fennesz je aufgenommen hat. Die akustische und die elektronische Kontinentalplatte driften aufeinander zu. Kollidieren. In dem Gebirge, das sich an der Bruchstelle aufzutürmen beginnt, ganz am Gipfel, sitzt im kalten, klaren Nachthimmel Christian Fennesz und hat Gitarre und Powerbook auf seinem Schoß. Der nächste Frühling kommt doch bestimmt, oder? [Tobias Bolt] 10.0 Punkte

Boomkat (Web):

As the title suggests 'Field Recordings 1995-2002' is a compliation of works from the austrian wunderkid Christian Fennesz and in a similar way to Hrvatski's 'Swarm and Dither' it succeeds by digging deep to bring you tracks of serious quality and unbelieavble rarity. Kicking of with the previously unissued 'Good Man'. A full on sonic blast which manages not to mangle the senses but rather envelop you in blue warmth and hidden melodic rushes. Then for the first time on CD media is Mego 004, Christian's 'Instrument' 12" from 1995 in it's full glory. Four parts from 'Instrument 1-4', '1' gives a injection of muffled techno amongst the forward drones and clipped guitar feedback noises. '2' adopts intense feedback before the calm is brought. '3' chops the intensity up while micro beats dance to a motorik jungle tempo. '4' adopts Phillip Jeck traits, crackle loops driven by a hardrive rather than a belt driven Dansette motor. Incredibly moving and haunting. Other tracks come from his appearances on Mille Plateaux, Ash International, Keith Hrvatski's RKK label and Orthlorng Musork via his incredible rework of Stephan Mathieu & Ekkehard Ehkers' 'Heroin'. Twelve tracks from a modern day master. Incredible.

ei (USA):

Christian Fennesz's music is a lesson in human-computer interaction. Playing acousticmusic through digital filters and processors, and getting it to sound emotional and rich, is something many laptoppers have tried to accomplish with very little remarkable success. When Fennesz dropped Endless Summer on Mego in 2001, an alarming buzz surrounded his name. The soulful cyborg digitally crooned his way through a miniature binary symphony, Pet Sounds fore the Y2K. Since Endless Summer, Fennesz has been collaborating with some of the finest metalmen around, with little new solo material. Enter Field Recordings 1995:2002, a hulking slab of Fennesz history in the form of tracks distilled down to a lucky thirteen, including "Instrument," his debut twelve-inch for Mego, remixes for Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephan Mathieu, some soundtracks, compilation fodder like "Menthol," from Clicks & Cuts 2, Mille Plateaux's magnum glitch opus. By far the most inspirational material comes from the four parts of "Instrument." Densely layered and richly textured, we see Fennesz all over the canvas: dance beats, noise loops, acoustics and electronics in every hue and flavor, freely flying from the hands of the young visionary. In 21 minutes, Fennesz destroys these 'fields' with diamond-sharp audio bling, loosing captor and victim at the same time to startling ends. On "Betrieb" and "Codeine," Fennesz is at his electroacoustic best, collaging the already-collaged tracks of Ellers [sic] and Mathieu. The balance of the recordings are fact-finding missions about the power and presenhce of noise. The findings? Droning static, clipped squelch rhythms, bursts of dub bass and upside-down melodies. Collections like this tend to be solipsistic and lopsided, but Field Recordings avoids both, mostly because every single track is torn directly from the reified flesh of the mutant computermensch himself, and he only has beauty to share. [Michael Bernstein]

Phosphor (The Netherlands):

"Field Recordings" brings together a range of material Christian Fennesz has contributed to compilations, special projects and film soundtracks (for the movie "Blue Moon") between the years 1995 and 2002. Also, for the first time on CD, it includes his debut 12' for Mego, the awesome "Instrument", remastered, and a new track recorded specially for this release, "Good Man". This is his first release since "Invisible Architecture 02", together with Mika Vainio) and a prelude to his next studio album, which will be released on Touch in January 2003. After "Hotel Paral.lel" (Mego), "Plus 47 degrees..." (Touch) and "Endless summer" (Mego), Fennesz is mentioned in a lot in reviews as a reference. This album makes clear why. A rich variety of styles has been presented here. Every track is progressive, well-balanced and beautiful mastered. The uptempo, almost danceable "Instrument 1", the more industrial and repetitive "Instrument 2", "Betrieb", a beautiful sensitive floating remix from a song by Ekkehard Ehlers and the Click & Cuts track "Menthol" with lots of reworked digital sounds and crisp fragments are just a few examples presented on one of the best albums released lately...

Flux (UK):

Austrian Christian Fennesz has become someone to reckon with on the international processed-sound scene, his rise parallelling that of the label, Mego, with which he is most associated. He is good because his work still sounds like music while being challenging, gritty and abstract. He began as a guitarist, and most of the pieces here still sound like guitar playing, though with many extra layers of distortion and repetition. Hear this and most rock music instantly becomes pointless. [Andi Chapple]

Muzik (UK):

Fennesz's computer-processed guitar music is like listening to The Stooges or Velvet Underground with the words, tunes and rhythm track removed. Which seems perverse unless you remember it's the sound of that music - the fuzz, feedback, roar and drone - that makes it so exciting, not just Iggy's ereliner or Lou Reed's barbed observations. Some of the earlier tracks here are rooted in techno, but by the time you get to 'Codeine' - a cunningly titled remix of Stephan Mathieu & Ekkehard Ehlers' 'Heroin' - you realise this is the future of rock 'n' roll. [Tom Mugridge] - (There is also a photo and interview in the Dec 2002 edition)

Other Music (USA):

While so many indie bands have been toiling endlessly to follow up My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" LP and fail, Fennesz manages to do it seemingly by accident. Unlike other Fennesz releases, "Field Recordings" has a grittiness that allows us to actually seem to hear the hand stroke upon the guitar strings, but still ends up being totally inhuman. Wave upon wave build, break down and surge beyond expectation repeatedly. A one man Glenn Branca orchestra (see track three: "Instrument 3"). Chords and notes fall through the cloud wall in unnatural yet beautiful patterns. Remember at the end of MBV's set when Kevin Shields planted his guitar upright in the middle of the stage while it fed back an unbelievable, countless amount of hypnotic sound waves through the audience? This album is full of moments like that except it's way more sculpted. "Guitar bands" take heed -- better than Van Halen. Necessary music. [SM] ("Field Recordings" collects material created between 1995 and 2002 for compilations, soundtracks and special projects. Included is "Instrument," Fennesz's first 12" for Mego, plus a brand new track.)

Stylus (USA):

overheard by tobias c. van Veen

dear Christian Fennesz, (a love letter):

letters of tenderness to your particle caresses, to your subconscious synaesthesia that runs fingers down my spine. I realised I could only write you a love letter when, after licking my words, and readying those wounds (love bites from that fateful night I took you on the subway!), I could not come without your consent. You held me ready, and in waiting, your throbbing sound coursing through my body... Because here, you play your Instrument (remember that long lost night on the Rhine? when we sung in Italian to a wall of water?). Yes, that ancient-1995!-Mego 004 12", so desperately desired by so many, you have finally given it over, percussive swellings, staccato over your moaning guitar, processed through erotic warmth of laptop circuitry... it was just a breath of what was to come, wasn't it?

dear Fennesz, it's all about feeling. About feeling you and you feeling me. About sound playing a layering of so many parts, so many melodies in that noise, deep in rubbing textures, that the sonic itself thins itself out into feedback, hitting the repetition that draws blood from skin. Here, and like Nietzsche told me late one night through the whispers of Derrida, my whole body becomes an ear.

I think I've heard you, Fennesz. But I still don't understand you. That picture I keep of you on the mantlepiece, with your sunglasses and open white shirt, that night after we painted the tones in multicolours and your acidic smile turned sour-you're dangerous, Fennesz, and I love you for it. Even when the ocean rears its ugly hydra-head behind your back, even then your lovely fingers will keep plucking. "Fennesz is a composer of electronic music for electric guitar," I read in the Saturday morning papers. But you're so much more than that. You're mysterious. And they got it all wrong, anyways (they always do). They said that everything prior to Endless Summer was just philosophical treatises, and that Endless Summer was the poetic exploration...but it's really just the opposite, isn't it? Philosophy, philo sophia, has always been about love. With Endless Summer you just had to spell it out a bit more clearly for those still not getting it-that love can also involve being a little tied up.

I dreamt about us swimming in that processed ocean of echoes and feedback chambers, of sound so thick and warm that you could breath it in. And we do breath it in, don't we? Sound is air-waves, afterall, and with your compressed carbon copy close to my mouth I suck in all you have to offer. It's all there in the "Surf," when the delay closes in, like when you tumble in the white and get pounded down into the wash, body broken and huddled in the foreign water and then, propelled up and out, towards air, breathing the roaring of the ocean: you're alive I am alive you yell...and out for the next wave "rock" "electronic" – such silly terms, aren't they, as I hold you close-as we all do, out here, grabbing your sonic body and ripping it to shreds, carne vale, throwing of the flesh . I'm sorry, Fennesz, that it had to come out this way. And you are too, at the end, when you left for Stephen and Ehlers to make beautiful Musork. But we'll always have our memories of those days spent 'in the field,' those wonderful recordings from the hotel, and that unforgettable summer lost in the surf...

yours,

VITAL (The Netherlands):

About 20 years ago, the CD arrived. I never thought that so many of the obscurities of my vinyl collection would be on CD. Since I move houses too often, I am so delighted to get rid of my vinyl and replace them by CDs. So a collection of Fennesz is most welcome, even when one can get rid of one piece of vinyl after that... This collection has the famous 'Instrument' 12" - the first statement of Fennesz as a guitarist working with samplers and computers (after his initial career as a rock guitarist) and what a great relaunch of a career. Besides this we find a whole bunch of compilation tracks that might be hard to get or which are deleted (and in a most curious case, also one that will be released next year, his remix for Mathieu/Ehlers 'Heroin' project). It's interesting to see Fennesz work evolve over the years. 'Instrument' is still a fairly 'normal' piece of music, with rhythm machines and gliding drones. Compare that with 'Odessa' or 'Codeine' - pulsating drones in which electronics celebrate (with a guitar strum never far away). But in all it's aspects, Fennesz slightly fuzzy electronic sound, which is warm most of the time, the musical element is never far away. He never drowns in letting the plug ins wander freely, but limits himself to composing a small, yet definte composition. A rare quality not often seen among the glitchtoppers. Fennesz is still the best! (Frans de Waard)

Brainwashed:

Kicking off with the previous unreleased track "Good Man", Christian treats us to a taste of what's to come: warm, earthy textures in the digital whirrs and purrs, handled with his usual careful composition. This is followed by the four pieces from the out-of-print "Instrument" 12", released by MEGO in 1995. Created using guitar-based sounds, these early tracks are marked by unusual juxtapositions of mood-switching from swift, controlled grittiness to bassy, dreamy, brittle washes. Among the tracks culled from various other compilations is "Menthol" from Mille Plateaux's 'Clicks and Cuts Vol. 2', which is slightly uninspiring, standand glitchy fare. This, however, is the only low point on 'Field Recordings'. Other standouts include "Surf" from the Ash International compilation 'Decay' with its epic walls of sound and Fennesz's remix of a Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers track from their collaboration 'Heroin'. Those hungry for a follow-up to Fennesz's acclaimed 2001 album 'Endless Summer' will have to wait a bit longer, but in the mean time, this compilation serves as an excellent appetizer. [Jessica Tibbits]

(Belgium):

Op een korte termijn brak het laptop en -gitaarwerk van de Oostenrijker Christian Fennesz bij een groter publiek door. Zijn output centert zich rond de labels Mego en Touch. Het Britse Touch heeft de naam reflectief en 'serieus' met hun artiesten en uitgaven om te gaan en het bundelen van Fennesz' moeilijker te vinden materiaal ligt dan ook in die lijn. 'Field Recordings 1995-2002' is geen verzameling van veldopnames die Fennesz nog in de kast had liggen, maar een compilatie van werk dat eerder op andere bloemlezingen verscheen, remixes (voor ondermeer Stephan Mathieu en Ekkehard Ehlers) en composities voor (kort)films. Het werk steekt van wal met de eerste uitgave die de dertiger bij Mego in 1995 bracht: de uitverkochte single 'Instrument'. De vier versies werden aangelengd met 'Good Man', een werk dat Fennesz recentelijk met de geluidsbronnen van 'Instrument' componeerde. Hoewel de Oostenrijker over de laatste zeven jaar voornamelijk in de diepte evolueerde, valt het op dat hij vroeger meer naar ritme en repetitie zocht: 'Instrument 1 & 3' bevatten een uitgevaagde breakbeat en verwijzen naar de destijds boomende drum 'n' bassesthetiek. De overige tracks gaan volledig horizontaal en schilderen - zoals gebruikelijk - traag evoluerende kleurlandschappen waar bijtijds een melancholische kilte doorwaait. In januari 2003 verschijnt bij Touch een nieuwe soloplaat van Fennesz, ondertussen is hij ook vertegenwoordigd op de compilatie 'Star Switch On'. Daarop zijn veldopnames van de Britse geluidsman Chris Watson door een keur van populaire geluidskunstenaars onder wie Mika Vainio, Philip Jeck, Hazard en Biosphere onder handen genomen (de originelen werder eerder bij Touch als de albums 'Stepping into the Dark' en 'Outside the Circle of Fire' uitgebracht). Fennesz levert een nogal statische bijdrage: op enkele loops na lijken Watsons registraties van dierengeluiden nauwelijks behandelt. Wel erg intens is het werk van Vainio en dat van Jeck: met respectievelijk elektronica en vinylmanipulatie tillen ze het griezelige basismateriaal naar het niveau van driedimensionale, beklemmende en fascinerende luistertrip. [Ive Stevenheydens]

[trans:
Quite rapidly the work (guitar and laptop) of Fennesz reached a larger audience. His work is brought out via the labels Mego and Touch. The British label Touch is famous for dealing reflectively and seriously with both artists and their releases. Bringing together Fennesz harder to find work on one CD seems a logical step. 'Field Recordings 1995-2002' is not a collection of field recordings, but a compilation of earlier recorded tracks, of remixes (for Stephan Mathieu en Ekkehard Ehlers) and compositions for (short) movies. The CD starts with an edition of the now sold out single ‘Instrument’ that was brought out on Mego in 1995. The four versions were followed by ‘Good man’, a work that Fennesz made recently with the sound sources he used for ‘Instrument’. Although the Austrian evolved the last seven years more into depth, it is striking that he sought more for rythm and repitition in his early years: 'Instrument 1 & 3' contain a phased-out breakbeat and refers to the formerly booming drum 'n' bass aesthetics. The remaining tracks are fully horizontal and they paint – as usual – slowly evolving coloured landscapes with a sometimes chilling melancholy. In january 2003 Touch will bring out a new Fennesz solo CD. Meanwhile Fennesz is also present on the compilation 'Star Switch On'. This CD contains the field recordings of Chris Watson interpreted by popular sound-artists such as Mika Vainio, Philip Jeck, Hazard and Biosphere (the original versions were earlier released on Touch as the albums 'Stepping into the Dark' and 'Outside the Circle of Fire'). Fennesz’ contribution is rather static: apart from a few loops he seems not to have treated Watsons’ field recordings. Very intense however are the contributions of Vainio and Jeck: with respectively electronica and vinyl manipulation they manage to lift up the spooky original material towards a three dimensional, haunting and fascinating listening trip.]

%Array (UK):

Not field recordings per se, rather an attempt to cast the spotlight onto some of Fennesz' other, perhaps less well known, activities - particularly his remixes - and cast a backwards glance over several notable contributions to compilations that might otherwise have slipped beneath the radar. The reproduction of his critically acclaimed 'Instrument' EP (originally released on 12" vinyl on Mego in 1995) is reason alone to own this compilation. As if that weren't enough, Touch have generously drawn together a host of remixes and contributions to a number of compilations making 'Field Recordings' an indispensable release. 'Menthol', from 'Clicks & Cuts Vol. 2', shimmers and throbs in true Fennesz fashion - heat haze electronics, scattered tonal fragments suspended in molten glass. 'Betrieb', remixed from Ekkehard Ehlers' album of the same name, is four minutes of swirling chords, distended and set atop low end buzz. 'Surf', from Ash International's 1997 compilation 'Decay', a shuddering cascade of multi-timbral hiss unwinding slowly but surely... Fennesz' restrained electronics are the digital equivalences of Morton Feldman's gently-unfolding aural soundscapes or Mark Rothko's captivating canvasses. He resists the urge to over-produce, building careful compositions which are beautifully understated. His light touch, nuanced ebbs and flows, and distinctive voice unquestionably seductive. Closing with 'Codeine', his contribution to the remix/version album accompanying Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers' 'Heroin' re-release on Orthlorng Musork, is perfect. Musical narcotic you'd willingly become addicted to. [Chris Murphy]

also Field Recordings 1995:2002 appeared in the top 10 albums of the year in the folowing magazines:

humo 17.12.02 [belgian weekly tv mag]
The Wire - electronica section, Jan 2003 edition

Disquiet (USA):

Best of 2002:

Fragile as they are visceral, Christian Fennesz's compositions often sound like instrumental approximations of everyday noise filtered through a pop sensibility -- what seems like distant traffic could just as easily be a guitar symphony, and what seems like a distant industrial hum is more likely a precisely constructed experiment in rhythm and sound.

Side Line (Belgium):

First there's the funny cover of this album, showing a picture of an old tractor in the midst of a field. It more than probably represents the title of the album by Christian Fennesz. His "Field Recordings" are a selection of contributions to compilations, special projects, film soundtracks, his debut 12" and a few previously unreleased tracks. Diving into the universe of Fennesz is like a trip through diversified ambient impressions. The opening cuts are real attention grabbers for showing an elaborated writing process in the ambient style! He recovers his textures with a wealth of sound, adding several industrial ideas to the whole work! The "Instrument 1" and "Instrument 3" pieces are both real pearls! It's a while ago that an extreme form of ambient has caught my attention that much. Especially the 2nd cut is remarkable for the cold and sterile atmosphere that has been reinforced with a sort of space bleeps! I just regret that the entire album doesn't sound the same direction! Fennesz also experiences with acoustic guitar soundscapes, opening a door to pure experimental form! I realize that the main part of his oeuvre comes closer to the real soundtrack composition, but I can only hope that this artist will ever create a pure opus in the style of of the debut songs! Anyway, a worth to listen! [DP:6/7]

Dusted (USA):

Grounds for Renown. Christian Fennesz's relative superstardom is fascinating given the opaque nature of his craft. Disfiguring, and in the process often disenfranchising the guitar through a series of audio synthesis programs doesn't normally translate into wide-ranging recognition. Previous works like Hotel Parallel and plus forty seven degrees 56' 37" minus sixteen degrees 51' 08" merit their masterpiece reputations, but remain intensely esoteric and austere. Similar European artists have blazed equally captivating excursions into the avant-garde (see the Raster-Noton label for example) without developing the buzz worthy of promotional comparisons and RIYL stickers. Fennesz's recent forays into popular culture ("covering" the Rolling Stones and, for all intents and purposes, the Beach Boys) undoubtedly attracted music enthusiasts outside of the Powerbook nation and inside a more media-driven marketplace. The potential novelty value of "Paint It Black" and outright melodicism of Endless Summer caught avant-rock fans by surprise in 2001, filling a niche for something "new" and redefining the extent of their genre. However, an argument can be made that Fennesz's fame is partially linked to his prolificacy. The man has played a part in over a dozen full-length recordings since 1995, ranging from his solo studio albums to improvisational group collaborations on labels like Erstwhile and Grob. It also doesn't hurt to be one-third of a "supergroup" with Peter Rehberg and the ubiquitous Jim O'Rourke. Fans of Fennesz's permeation of the avant-garde and not just his pop sensibility are more apt to fall for Field Recordings 1995:2002, a collection of compilation donations over the past eight years plus the entirety of 1995's Instrument EP. Many of the recordings and remixes on Field Recordings unfurl with the gentility that marked Endless Summer, but not necessarily the explicit detail to melody. In a sense, Field Recordings acts as an introduction to the recently converted fashionista who know only of his sun-kissed systemische. Instrument, his debut 12" for Mego, is the key installment on Field Recordings. The long out-of-print EP, here remastered, features some of Fennesz's most overtly rhythmic compositions. "Instrument 1" consists of looped guitar roughage and danceable beats that could be adequately deemed "post-industrial". "Instrument 2" dusts mechanical dither with hesitant, almost translucent piano, while "Instrument 3" overlays cyclical guitar stabs and a skittering cymbal to dizzying effect. Instrument's finale "Instrument 4" is perhaps the jumping-off point for Fennesz's later work. Here he trades rhythm for hues, looping a languid guitar piece underneath some digital dust. The resolute attention to backdrop, and on a grander scale the delineation of space, on "4" was manifest in greater detail on Hotel Parallel and remains one of Fennesz's studio specialties. The various Various Artists tracks assembled here vary in profundity. "Ivend00", which was composed for the rkk13 CD on Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge, is a thin exercise in pretense. "Surf", taken from Ash International's Decay is an aptly-titled and engrossing dive into shoegazer drone. "Good Man", which was reportedly composed specifically for this compilation, actually sounds like material from the cutting-room floor of the Endless Summer sessions. Fans of the Summer sound have two far-better tracks to digest here, both remixes for Ekkehard Ehlers, possibly Fennesz's closest contemporary. "Betrieb" features a serene string drone with momentary glitches, while the album's closer "Codeine" (a remix of the Ehlers/Stephan Mathieu track "Heroin") executes the Endless Summer blueprint to perfection. Its folky guitar strums and ethereal drones are a blissful counteractant to the harsher complexities of Field Recordings. Whether "Codeine" is enough to satiate the latter-day Fennesz fan is questionable, but for those who hold Hotel Parallel in the same regard as Endless Summer, the inclusion of Instrument more than justifies Field Recordings. Plus, nothing cements rock star status like a spotty B-sides compilation. [Otis Hart]

Blitz (Portugal):

In "Field Recordings" there is a game of ironies which is not circumscribed to the relationship of the CD title and its cover. Contrary to what one is led to think, the album is not made up of field recordings, but rather of a compilation of Fennesz's studio works. It comprises a period between 1995 and 2002, and includes tracks previously scattered, namely remixes, new versions and themes only available on compilations or vynil. However, despite such disparate origins, despite the wide time length, there is a link between the tracks which confirms Fennesz's aesthetic coherence. On the other hand, the intrinsic quality of each track reaffirms Fennesz as one of contemporary electronics' most interesting exponents. But this edition is, foremost, a perfect opportunity to deconstruct his method. It hits stridently, it dissecates coldly, it performs autopsies on the borderline of maximum voltage. the parisitism that sustains the endemic systems reveals its granular progression, it offers itself in calculated corrosion. It's the noisiest side of Fennesz, the one in which acidity acts more explicitely upon the melodic surfaces. "Field Recordings" resists against any ambient context, it slowly thunders its back against tranquility. It is an album that which opens space with hypnotic precision, absorbs the air in a crawling progression. The idyllic cover is, therefore, misleading. But that is part of the game of ironires - this one is simply one more. (8/10) [trans. Heitor Alvelos]

nthposition (web):

Having made a considerable splash with last year's 'Endless Summer', Fennesz has gone back through his catalogue and put together this compilation of small projects from the last seven years. Much of the material here is similar in feel to 'Endless' - powerbook click and cut combined with guitar producing curiously pastoral drone-based soundscapes. Given this kind of palette, it is easy for musicians to become complacent and just loop a few samples, sit back and let the laptop make the running. Christian Fennesz is not one for the easy option, however; every piece here is carefully thought out and structured, giving even the simplest-seeming drone an absorbing structural complexity. Pieces included here range from the ragged roar of Name with no Horse, an energetic deconstruction of America's Horse With No Name, to two tracks from the soundtrack of the film 'Blue Moon, Stairs' and 'Odessa', which quiver with low-key microtonal subtlety. Here, in its entirety, is Fennesz's first 12" single, Instrument - four tracks, Instrument 1-4 which first appeared in '97. Going back to the roots of the Fennesz sound, some of the inspirations for his music become clearer, with Instrument 2 having strong overtones of Cabaret Voltaire circa 'Red Mecca'. The CD opens with the one entirely new track here, Good Man, which takes a simple guitar piece and pulls it apart like one of those exploded diagrams of aircraft etc that used to front The Eagle, abstracting the elements into buzzes, clicks and hums. The whole album is consistently strong, with curiously tuneful elements emerging from the drone and rumble that makes up the core of these pieces. Fennesz is proving himself to be a subtle worker within the limited paramaters he sets himself for his work. He shows confidence, dedication and an impressive imagination, The music that results is curiously beautiful in a way one would not expect, given the source material. This is also much stronger than one usually expects from a stop-gap archive-trawling album and has thoroughly whetted my appetite for Fennesz's next proper album, due in early 2003. [Ian Simmons]

super45 (Peru):

Sin pecar de fanatismo, hay que decir que Field recordings es lo que cualquier artista o banda requiere para enfrentarse a un nuevo público: una compilación de trabajos para películas, remixes y el hoy descatalogado EP de 1995, Instrument. El disco se abre con la genial e inédita ‘Good man’ en la que Christian Fennesz demuestra lo grandioso que resulta el ruidismo con toques melódicos y tintes sonoros guitarrescos. Quizás sea la gema del disco junto con lo que viene a continuación: el hoy buscadísimo Instrument EP que en este compilatorio aparece en su totalidad. La primera parte del disco acaba con Instrument 4, que debe mucho a Brian Eno por sus ambientes y sus teclados. La segunda parte empieza con la genial 'Betrieb', tema de un ruidismo y paisajes sonoros puros con toques finales similares a latidos; en 'Menthol', extraído del compilado Clicks and cuts vol. 2 (para el mismo sello), se aprecia la complejidad del sonido del vienés. 'Surf' remite a sonidos casi shoegazing, mezclados con la ambientación, ruidos y la música progresiva alemana de décadas atrás – krautrock, que le dicen. 'Stairs', 'Odessa'(de la película Blue Moon del 2002) e 'Ivendoo' son ambientaciones de minuto y medio. Los dos minutos de guitarra y ruidos a los Merzbow de 'Name with no horse' casi se acercan a la versión original de America. El disco acaba con otro buen tema: 'Codeine', el remix para Heroin de E Ehlers y Stephan Mathieu, con los ya conocidos sonidos electro-acústicos de guitarras acopladas a sonidos paisajistas. Field recordings rescata para el "gran público" una excelente parte del catálogo de Fennesz que, de otro modo, habría sido patrimonio exclusivo de los coleccionistas. Más que recomendable. [Reynaldo Gonzales Ágreda]

Fennesz "Live at Revolver/Melbourne 3_02_00" reviews

fakejazz.com:

SETTING: It is New Years Eve and I am having dinner at a friends apartment.

PARTICIPANTS: Me, Pete Spynda, Ken Camden, Paul Groper, Ang Gagnon, Christie Gagnon, Portobello Mushrooms, Salad, Water, Vegetable Pie, Chocolate Chip Cookies

STORY: Dinner is about to begin when I suggest that we should put on the new Fennesz CD. I had already told Ken and Pete how much I liked it so it was agreed upon that Fennesz would be our dinner music. I turned the CD on and sat down at the table. I began by pouring myself a glass of water. The music begins with a quiet, rolling, scraping sound, smooth distorted tonal patterns begin to evolve slowly under the rolling. I pass Ang a mushroom and take one for myself. Pete comments on the progression, something to the extent of "I like this, it really pushes forward without really going anywhere." He passes me the vegetable pie. I can see that Christie is beginning to look anxious. Ken comforts her with his hand on her shoulder. The music continues to grow, raising frequencies and constantly enveloping itself sometimes being interrupted by electronic glitches. Paul comments on the fact that my glass of water is beginning to shake. The progression continues building in intensity. Time begins to slow down for me. I am completely lost in the sound. Pete begins to choke on a piece of vegetable pie when the tones fade into what I will consider to be the meanest gangsta rap beat I have ever heard. This only lasts for a short while as the beat subsides and morphs into a new static tone. Pete gives himself the Hymleck against a chair. He pours himself a glass of water and tries to relax. A small digital rhythmic pattern begins to develop. Ken stands up screaming, "I feel like Darth Vader is serenading at me from the bottom of my fish tank." Ang gets a look of fear in her eye and tells Ken it is just the music. He settles but is obviously not well. Everyone seems to be getting a bit edgier. Paul begins to twitch. Clicks, pops, and glitches begin to have small conversations between short computer tones slowly dripping together into a digital popcorn. We are all looking for a pattern here. I begin to talk about my love for early video game sound while eating a cookie, suddenly I spit the cookie out as the greatest wall of distorted sound this side of Merzbow takes over. No one can eat. No one can speak. We are all in the midst of the wild harsh drones. We are no longer in the apartment. We have entered into a laptop computer consciousness. I feel like my nose will bleed soon. Finally the distortion fades into a beautiful wave of slow morphing tones, "sound", and mild skipping interruptions. A sense of structure begins and dinner continues. Pete says something about the simple rhythmic complexities being static like rain after thoughts. It is obvious to me at this point that this music has made us all insane. We continue to eat slowly and the music continues to morph into itself creating a tonal symphony between distortions, low end hums, scratches, and pops. Dinner is silent as the music fades. Only sixteen minutes and thirty three seconds had past but we were all different by then. Ken was convinced that his metabolism had changed. Pete just wanted to listen to Folke Rabe. Ang decided to go to sleep but complained of machine-like bugs tearing at her feet in her dreams. Christie tried to wash dishes but dropped three of them on the floor. I drove home and wrecked into a fire hydrant. When I awoke in the hospital the doctor told me that the tumor I had been diagnosed with the week before had miraculously disappeared. Thank you Fennesz!!

RESULTS: Don't just worship Fennesz because he is from Austria. Worship him because this record is incredible

The Wire (UK):

More engaging by far is the Fennesz CD-R, recorded live in Melbourne during the same [Mego] tour. Only 16 minutes long, the improvisation springs from a rustling, low pitched loop and a curiously churchy fuzz organ. Fennesz's minor-key play is quite affecting, setting up a fragile melodic fragment that is eventually swallowed up by swarms of hiss and buzz. In its second phase the piece is taken over by a roaring, guitar-derived blast of sound that is counterposed by clicks and whistles. Then a shimmering chord rises to the centre of the piece. Fennesz likes notes - his pieces pit expressive chords and tones against the coarse and thrilling evasiveness of noise. Deliciously softcore. [Will Montgomery]

Other Music (USA):

Perhaps one of the pitfalls of laptop-performance-oriented music is that the artists tend to corner themselves either into undirected improvisation or bland repetition. In this, his first solo live CD, Christian Fennesz overcomes and completely avoids these issues to create one of the most powerfully intense live sets with the same tools. His piece evolves and changes rapidly, yet remains completely cohesive and focused. The sound itself is pure and undiluted; textures wash over each other, lush and beautiful melodies rise up to the foreground, or fall back, just underneath the waves. Much attention is paid to dynamics, from quietly sparse textures to passionate swirling walls of sound. It's neither too short nor too long: therefore time doesn't exist, just the sound itself. Clocking in at just under 17 minutes, this live performance has more focus, depth and direction than others twice its length. The two minutes in RealAudio above are among the best two minutes I've had all year. [JZ]

Electronik:

This is the third in Touch's series of live recordings, following Philip Jeck in Tokyo and SETI in Brussels. Recorded at the Revolver Club in Melbourne on the Mego tour of Australia, it follows Fenneszs critically acclaimed Plus Forty Seven Degrees 5637 Minus Sixteen Degrees 5108 album (also on Touch). The CD itself is 16:33 long and amounts to a snapshot of the Fennesz live experience. Taking a range of electronically generated buzzes, tones, blips and clicks; he turns them into a work of art. His music shifts and evolves as you listen; tones and pitches change and new sounds are introduced. The intensity and sound level slowly increase before dying out again, only to reconstruct itself again. Electronic tones crackle and fizz as guitar feedback whistles over them. Never static or showing any sign of a programmed loop, Fennesz's music twists, turns and evolves before you. Amazing. Totally engaging beautiful music that provides an insight into the intensity of Fennesz's work in the live arena. A thoroughly excellent CD that is well worth investigating further, especially if you enjoy the work of Biosphere, Hazard and alike. [Paul Lloyd 12 October 2000]

AMG (Canada):

This EP was recorded live at the Revolver in Melbourne, Australia, on February 3, 2000. Although it bears a CD-R catalog number and is packaged like Touch's CD-R line, it is not a CD-R but a limited pressing of 1,000 copies. Christian Fennesz has quickly become a major figure on the free improv electronics scene, and here he shows what his live magic is all about. The piece is made of white noise, analog electronics, some digital real-time editing, and (maybe?) electric guitar. Fennesz' approach here is rather minimal. He eludes the standard built-up format and keeps the music delicate and low-profile for the first half, before it suddenly explodes at eight-and-a-half minutes into the track, creating a wake-up call effect. A few minutes later, the piece quiets down into a polluted new age mood. Impressive. [Francois Couture]

%Array [web]:

At a guess 'Live at Revolver' was recorded at this year's 'What is Music' festival and amounts to a snap-shot (at just over 16 minutes) of a single performance by Christian Fennesz, one of the laptop participants. Fennesz is known to source many of his sounds from guitar, recording straight to hard-disc, and although he often gives free rein to the the laptop's facility as a noise-generator he tempers his sound with ghostly melodies in which fragmentary guitar chords are often discernible just below the surface. By the time we join this performance the kindling sticks are crackling. Fennesz improvises a stunted melody for some minutes in which he stops and unstops organ-like notes in a somewhat random fashion, managing to make his presence without exactly blowing the barn doors away. At a point about half-way through this recording, however, after his earlier activities have fizzled out in a mild gust of radio interference, Fennesz chooses to drop a quite stunning slab of guitar-viscera into the left channel. One can imagine the bar sitters grabbing for their earplugs, hairs standing up on the backs of necks, as one onslaught follows another of quite delicious melodic noise. The storm subsides and Fennesz finally bears his listeners aloft on a turbulent carpet ride of uplifting chords and ionic interference. I wouldn't exactly describe this as an essential piece of Fennesz (for that look to his 3" CD on Tanz*Hotel 'Il Libro Mio' in particular, or his earlier full-length on Touch) but then, it doesn't exactly present itself as being that either: it comes in a plain white card sleeve bearing a CDR catalog number and monochrome artwork which shadows that of his earlier Touch CD. For such humility this CD rather recommends itself. [GM]

remote induction (web):

This live recording from Christian Fennesz starts with a crackling layer. This has a vibrating feel as it loops, buzz and whirr being added slowly to provide a certain melodic suggestion. Mild tumbling sounds and strong string can be heard within the sighing flow. These elements go through moments of intensification - the background layer streaming in a tinny fashion, before stepping up a notch. The initial rumbles become more a ridge, a wave that rises and falls. Then everything falls down to a sigh of notes and barest crackle. From which we have a mild build, followed by a more pronounced level of detuned signal. The form of crackle and buzz becomes a translation of data, accelerating with each punch card processed. The buzz almost grinds as this builds into a bubbling whole - layers amassing with the momentum. Stripping down to a tight crackling oscillation, the frequency then falling and threatening to collapse. Though before it does a smooth tone comes up and we have a more melodic micro section - punctuated by high blips. Shifting again this takes on a more pulsing feel while retaining consistent elements. Then its over, being the third in Touch's series of live recordings, consisting of 1 track just over 16 minutes long.

frequency (web):

Clocking in at a nadge over quarter of an hour long, Live At Revolver, Melbourne makes up for its shortness with some intensity instead. The whines and drones of clickety-snickety underpinnings meet tones at fifty paces then closing to quarters more uncomfortable. These things should sometimes be kept at arms length, but bringing the sound of what resembles a wardrobe being manhandled into a coal cellar this close to the ears can be enjoyable up to a point. That point is probably about right at the length presented here. Hypnosis is acheived, interventions made and proposed, the texture of hiss and decay propounded on the bones of rhythm and melody just about gets remembered like a distant cousin. There are guitars resident in the cloacum of rendered acoustic transformation, but they don't stand a chance against the forces of sputter and disc-error scrum which evolves into purgative electronic outburts; which is as it should be on such occasions. One of the key lessons of this unrestrained noise-chunder format is knowing when enough is enough for the audience or listener if not the performer; so easy to misjudge, to collapse into the delights of letting freeform spats of the kind of noise your grandmother wouldn't like unless she happened to be Alice Coltrane fly free. Even if it was time restraints which brought about the limit to this performance, such are the benefits of restriction. As the downward coast in territories of less opprobrious earache engenderment suggest closure, it is to Christian Fennesz' considerable credit that it's with a flitter of fond farewell rather than endurance that the CD concludes. [Antron S. Meister]

Chain D.L.K. (USA):

One track, 16 minutes, 3rd live album for Touch (after Philip Jeck's Tokyo performance and S.E.T.I.'s Brussels concert) and 2nd release by Fennesz (after his acclaimed "Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56'37" Minus Sixteen Dregrees 51'08". Recorded live on the Mego tour (at the What is Music Festival) in Melbourne, Australia, Mr. Christian 'anti festival-sponsors' Fennesz live sessions aren't obviously a recreation of the unique sounds of his debut (it would be quite difficult to create sounds of his garden - where he recorded the foresaid debut album - on the stage). Subtle noises feeding loud amplifiers, cutting edge know tweaking and softer crystal layers... all together... I can't picture a concert like this without an extraordinary Orb-like light show... who knows... [Marc Urselli-Schürer]

goldteeth.blogspot.com (web):

I finally got the fennesz _03.02.00 ? live at revolver, melbourne_ cd (touch to:cdr3, but it's not a cdr), and if you're interested, I would recommend picking this up before the collaboration with rosy parlane. that's good, but this is great - almost a 17-minute summation of what our boy christian is all about, with guitar mulched via expensive, 3733t h4x0r warez made by old french guys ? from the harshest sub-melody to the most candy-sweet noise, it is incredibly expressive/impressive and should be a model for guys with laptops and efficient euro haircuts everywhere. I like fennesz when he collaborates with others, but I love him when he works alone, excepting that last cd on touch, the longitude/latitude one. which I might actually buy again.

Fennesz "plus forty seven degrees 56' 37" minus sixteen degrees 51' 08"' reviews

Mojo (UK):

AND THIS...

RECORDED IN his back garden using a Powerbook and a mixing desk, fennesz' second album 'plus forty seven degrees 56' 37" minus sixteen degrees 51' 08"' (Touch) is an object lesson in just how far out there you can go with a little technology. Through layering, shaping and distorting sounds fennesz has created an intensely varied, often disjointed slice of outre electronica that encompasses mesmeric textures, harsh frequencies and churning sheets of noise. Recommended listening for anyone with an interest in the sonic manipulations of Oval, Pan Sonic or the Mego label, who released fennesz' 'Hotel Paral.lel' debut. [Andrew Carden]

Othermusic (USA):

Created using field recordings of his backyard and signature guitar playing, this CD shows Mego artist Christian Fennesz taking a different approach from the fragmented and cracked pop treatments of "hotel paral.lel" and "Plays". Far subtler and more abstract, melody is hinted at, but never achieved, buried beneath layers of sound. Any resemblence to the source material is obliterated, yet each sound somehow retains some vague, inherent qualities Beautifully designed with photography by Jon Wozencroft. [JZ]

VITAL (The Netherlands):

Herr Fennesz released his first solo album 'Hotel Paral.lel' on Mego. Earlier this year his CD Single of covers of the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys came out on Moikai, and he's been busy contributing tracks to compilations and performing as one of the laptop gang. [He won a prize at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria this year, which I discovered in the press release, he promptly broke in protest 'of the festival organiser's bias towards sponsor politics'. A man of danger, obviously. Still this sort of petulant behaviour has to happen at least once during the lifetime of any festival, I suppose. Personally I think that if he'd slowly squatted down on it until it completely disappeared, he - and it - would have made a more lasting impression. I mean, even Marlon Brando can bite the face off an Oscar, for God's sake. Never mind, I just wish this sort of redundant behaviour wasn't used to advertise to what marvellous and subtle heights human expression can rise.] Rather leave it to the things we manifest to display our brilliance, for these are infinitely more refined than we can ever hope to be. This new CD by Christian Fennesz is just such a beauty spot on the face of Pulchritude. Basic material was apparently recorded in his back garden - you can find out where he lives by using the map coordinates which are the title - using a Powerbook and a small mixing table. I'm not sure if the sounds themselve are all manipulations of natural sound events - doesn't really matter actually - this CD is a recording of a garden somewhere. A strange one, for sure, as some small creepy thing might hear it - resplendent, with microaudible made macroaudible, where sprinklers roar and scuffed gravel becomes an avalanche. The creaking arc of blades of grass straining towards the light, the soft hiss of dew chasing the sun. The murmurs of dirt, the stretching of stone and falling leaves crash like a gun. A terse 38'00 of shimmering, swirling electronic sound. A perfect length as it has to be played again immediately. Mysterious and pure. [Mark Poysden]

The Wire:

Of the names associated with Austria's Mego label, Christian Fennesz is the one who has tapped most into the legacy of psychedelic and industrial music and the resources of organic noise production. Here he takes the standard Mego language of needling synthetic tones, random clicks, buzzes and electronic blisters, and fuses them into a fluid rush of energy. If at times the results recall Merzbow, it's nothing to do with the scale and density of the noise, but more the rhythm of cutting and collapsing between streaming bodies of sound. As vibrant as this music becomes with the friction of speeding numbers and fine-tuned acid fugues, it remains inventively lucid. Much of the disc is rollercoaster stuff: digital psychedelia, speedfreak agitation, virtuososound derailments. A more tranquil track shows that he can alter the configuration too; it has the hushed spirituality of Arvo Part meditation heard beyond the burning rim of a bleached and blasted foreground.

What sticks in the ear is the clarity with which he shifts between different swathes and bandwidths of noise. From moment to moment what you catch feels like a pinball machine, a child's electronic toy, a rasping insect, a fax, or simply the abstract whirr of digital information &endash; all caught up in an articulate but pressured streamline.

Illuminations (Turkey):

Would you pay listening to the microscopic world with telescopic ears? No, not a micro-nature documentary we're talking about, at least not an ordinary one. Austrian musician Christian Fennesz, who's long known for his experiments with the electric guitar here presents 8. pieces of sonic mastery, totally entitled with the coordinates of his home, which he used as an abundant sound-source. "Plus Forty 56'37" Seven Degrees Minus Sixteen Degrees 51'08"" is a boiling pot of noisescapes which are distilled from the micro sound-universe of Mr. Fennesz's backgarden and processed in a powerbook and mixing desk - a brilliant example of proggression without being engaged to equipment fetishism. What he achieved is a meshwork of drebbling, rattling, pulsating and squelching noises, which are often washed with thick streams of icy echoes or backed by microwave swarms. The often disjointed organization of soundwebs can be connected to the Japanoise school but in regards of saturation the sounds do not surpass a certain limit. A pure and profound release that sticks a new definition to naturalism. [M.Y.]

Weekly Dig (USA):

Ambient synthesis and experimentation comes in many forms, ranging from syncopated gentle humming sounds with minimal beats to noisy atmospherics seemingly of extraterrestrial origin. Christian Fennesz, armed with only Powerbook and guitar, conceived his latest astral-ambient experimental piece in the comfort and privacy of his own backyard. The 8 tracks, obscure in nature and designated only by spatial numeric sequences like 010, 011, 012, 013 etc., offer a unique perspective of man and machine in a natural setting. The music itself contains soothing, minimalist segments, seamlessly recorded in a real-time fashion without noticeable breaks or interruption. Very reminiscent of early work produced by Robin Rimbaud a.k.a Scanner and solo material, Fennesz becomes the human link where terrestrial and celestial become one, as fragmented minimalist sound structures provide the dimly lit path Fennesz now walks. [Alkemist]

gg (USA):

Why is Vienna's Christian Fennesz one of the most widely respected and imitated guitarists of his generation? His notion of using new technology to reinvent an old instrument isn't unique in and of itself. But few execute these ambitions with the sparkling musicality that marks Fennesz's self-sampled computer-and-guitar treatments. Guitar may be the last thing to come to mind as coruscating wavebreaks, torrents of resampled sound, and crystalline glitch showers pour forth from Fennesz's second album. Yet six strings and a Powerbook are the sole sources of the sonic phenomena Fennesz conjures on +475637 -165108. Even as sounds are drastically crunched, compressed, and rejiggered, the lushness and luminance of Fennesz's compositions go against the sterile anti-nature of computerized synthesis. The eight untitled tracks resemble sensitive, telescopic recordings of rainforest insect life or natural atmospheric occurrences, not calculated computer-lab findings. This inherent naturalism extends to the warm, lifelike pulses that find their way into each piece. Fittingly, +475637 -165108 takes its title from the coordinates of Fennesz's backyard garden, the site of the open-air studio where these tracks were created.

City Newspaper (USA):

Imagine the electric guitar severed from cliché and all of its physical limitations, shaping a bold new musical language. Based in Vienna, Austria, Christian Fennesz sources all of his sounds from an electric guitar and takes the instrument into completely new territory. An articulate rush of cracked ambiance, digitalia, and musical malfunction. See also: Second by Chicago's Kevin Drumm on Perdition Plastics, and, in 2000, Insulation by Australia's Oren Ambarchi on Touch.

Jazzthetik (Germany):

Data torn apart becomes new, different data. Cut and paste in a format of sound...sometimes just paste, paste, paste. 014 - that's no vapours, that's a single cover. A plank. Made of nails and full of fluff. Surfaces appear from everywhere and change into a great rustling which is whirling in itself, compressed and dense. When there's suddenly quiet, then there's nothing. Nothing. Other tracks are made of angles. Thousands of angles which never become a circle. But a crystal made of oscillating interferences and ether noises. Christian Fennesz makes the conditions of production, under which sounds remain to be developed, seen and heard via his laptop. And he's marking his own interventions in that process. So there's the crackling noises of tools switched on as well as technical errors and high-frequency flirring of the tools themselves. The production of sounds reduced to its economical and social reality. [Klaus Smit]

Alternative Press (USA):

My Bloody Valentine are famous for having thrown the guitar into the digital blender, whipping up catgut froth in a radically new mélange (meringue?) of pop and noise. Ten years down the line, Christian Fennesz has given Kevin Shield's electric mixer an exponential power boost, proving that there are still hitherto unimagined flavors to be juiced out of the mixture of guitar pick and microchip. Picking up where his Hotel Paral.lel (Mego, 1997) left off, Plus Forty Seven Degrees sails by charts and map the chance geometry of digital sound manipulation. You may never hear the six-stringed underpinnings here, but you'll certainly feel echoes of their resonance in the frozen tones like water currents caught, snap-shot style, in a glacier's crawl, and transformed into something brittle and menacingly beautiful. Like the best artisans of 'microscopic sound', Fennesz recreates the organic from the atom up; he's a Romantic seduced by the binary.

The press release for the album says that is "was recorded by Fennesz during July and August this summer, transforming his back garden into an open air studio, using only guitar and powerbook". That unlikely idyllic duality comes through on the CD, reinforced by Jon Wozencroft's lush landscape photographs, which adorn the package. Imagine a chorus of modems caroling cricket fantasias and you're halfway there. [Philip Sherburne]

USA (net):

Fascinating walls of wiry sound stretched and kneaded by the prolific Christian Fennesz (the enclosed info sheet has him playing with a multitude of bands and musicians who reside on the outskirts of experimental). The music was created using only guitar and Powerbook, and recorded in his back garden; the impression of space is quite prevalent when the guitar's feedback and slippery noise wails to the open sky, while more earthbound, the sneaky cadences of manipulation are jittery like ants attacking an intruding beetle. "010" sweeps down on wings of wind-battered sound, wings that flutter, flap and glide. " 013" on the other hand, is nervous and twitchy, gurgling spastically before slipping into disjointed sequences that mesh musicality with static noise. Huge chords tumble forth during "014," coagulating like blood from a wound after the bleeding has ceased, slow and thick, while underneath, mesmerizing slashes of corrosive noise slice into fresh veins and arteries, forcefully draining more blood. The whole disc is a balance of clash and resolution between disparate sonic entities, a balance of stormy turbulence and itchy experimentalism. [JC Smith]

FAQT (USA):

Those damned Austrians and their glitch worshipping slop. Since 1994, the world has been subjected to zero and one heresy - Viennese label Mego acting out as corner stable - by the country's laptop wielding byte-monger elite. Who will save us? Call the UN. Bomb the fuckers.

Christian Fennesz is one such infamous footsoldier, notorious for obliterating Rolling Stone and Beach Boys classics, and a recent honoree at Austria's Ars Electronica festival. His second full length solo album was recorded in his backyard , under the open sky with just a guitar and a powerbook. You'd never know by listening, but it's fascinating just the same. Typically abstract and random in form, Fennesz's "degree symphony" is best when he turns up the heat and boils the sauce. The tension within the pool, the molecular shuffle of digital beads, the jagged brittle tones - sometimes faintly heart-tugging - it's mesmerizing and inspiring to behold. Like easy listening for the noise fan. Not so compelling is Fennesz in telegraph mode, but that's personal taste, I guess. Take it with a grain...

New York Press (USA):

These three important new albums from core practitioners of the glitchwerks movement represent the next step in the genre's evolution. While the first batch of glitchwerks releases (reviewed here a year ago) tended to stress the formal aspects of the music, these new offerings begin to take the cold digital source material and add emotion and warmth to it. It's fascinating to witness the melding of a didactic approach to computer-based work - some genuinely personal statements emerge.

Out of the thick waves of white digital noise, melody begins to appear. Christian Fennesz's latest begins with a soft atmospheric track - an electronic Satie-esque tune awash in sensual, transistor-radio-like static; it's a thick, calming, digital fog. The fourth track starts out with standard skipping glitches but soon shifts focus to a piano, which is digitally mangled, creating a savvy binary update to Cage's prepared pian - think of it as a "processed piano." The piano serves as a melodic basis for the piece, which is constantly interrupted by mechanical noises of every stripe. It's a great metaphor for the way electronics are altering the function of traditional concert hall instruments, giving them entirely new leases on life. A track in the middle of the disc at first sounds like a sheer assault on the ears, but as the piece progresses and your ears become accustomed to the volume, a gorgeous melody emerges from the density. It's a bit like listening to Morton Feldman - once you get on Fennesz's wavelength, small, unexpected occurrences leap out of every nook and cranny of the recording. It's a complex, varied and luscious landscape, echoing the cover art, which features photographs of lush, green landscapes that have been altered in some way by man and machines.

The Sound Projector (UK):

Christian Fennesz, one of the Mego 'superstars', and the man who brought us the sublime Fennesz Plays 45 last year, is on the warpath like a roaring beast here. The Mego team, concentrating on generating truly modern electronic music, have dispensed with conventional instruments like sequencers, drum machines and synths - and started to tinker directly with the sort of computer programming that makes such machines work in the first place. The most efficient way to do it seems to be to bypass the instruments and go straight to the programme, via a Powerbook. Using the keyboard and mouse, an intelligent artisan can vary the nature of his soundforms however he chooses.

You'd be forgiven for thinking this is record in no way 'musical'. Under normal circumstances I'd be put off too, but one listen to the furious and powerful sound textures on this (and other Mego-related items) will excite your neurons in ways you'd never dreamed possible - and change your mind in a second. This work is in fact more musical than much of what passes for musical entertainment in the welter of techno-based releases. At first listen, this may seem an excessively abstract work - perhaps brutally so. But all the features of exciting music are there, really - depth, texture, dynamics, volume and rhythm - but expressed as purely abstract, digital tones, freed from the associations of melody and harmony.

There are at least three great features to Christian Fennesz's work. One - unpredictability. His best moments - and these would include the wonderful final track on this not-overlong CD - confound the expectations of any listener, leaving one puzzled. What was that? Why did it stop so suddenly when it was just starting to say something? This sense of puzzlement can turn into a good thing, if you'll let it. This music is not inconsequential, because it leaves a very strong impression with you.

Two - Brevity. There's a lot of information in a Fennesz track. He has more ideas than most electronic buffoons manage in their entire career, so many indeed that he plays two or three of them together at the same time. Each component is clearly stated, and the listener needs only to work that little bit harder to distinguish the lines of thought. But be quick, because many of these tracks are tight and concise.

Three - pleasure. Fragments of musical notes bubble up from time to time within the flying sheets of crunchy, textured noise. A noise so palpable it's like the inside of a Crunchy Bar. Or is rather that some of these tracks started life as a melodious tune, and have been extensively reworked and taken apart into their basic, mechanical components?

This is the second solo full-length recording from Christian Fennesz - the first was Hotel Paral.lel - and it's made entirely with a guitar and a computer. And it's absolutely superb. [Ed Pinsent]

Minneapolis City Pages (USA):

THERE'S A THESIS to be written on the shared sociocultural factors that lead both middle-European electronic composers and their Middle American postrock kin to attempt to milk melodrama from irony. Maybe this affinity has something to do with the fact that each genre's metropolitan center occupies a similar spot on the nexus of labor and leisure. After all, Chicago is a union town, Berlin has a four-day workweek, and each has pressed musicians from diverse global crannies into paying their dues.

Lacking such an academic dissertation, we'll just have to settle for the aesthetic rewards that transnational collaborations like the Fenno'berg disc offer up. A meeting between Chicago post-rock avatar Jim O'Rourke and a pair of Austrians (math-rock/ambient guitarist Christian Fennesz and electro-minimalist Peter Rehberg), Fenno'berg is the sound of three men sitting at a table pecking at computers that chomp and flush what could pretty much be called the Entire History of Recorded Music. As the trio finds the anger in MOR samples and the beauty in sine-length manipulation, they manage to show up much modern tuneage, from film soundtracks to alt-rock. And yet they find the path to real emotion within that pathos.

For soundscapes without subtext, there's the Fennesz solo disc. Packaged in what appears to be an elaborate picture postcard of Teutonic milking country, the music scurries between the skitter of Oval, the squelch of Pansonic, and the drugged-out chest-beating of My Bloody Valentine. Most of the sounds here originate from beat-free laptop orchestrations that scrape away all musical details. Still, this is a pretty sensuous disc, particularly for music seemingly created largely to bore the girlfriends of smug audiophiles.

These discs represent different sides of the same musical coin. The orchestrator Fennesz secretly desires to transform a single note into a symphony. The collage artist O'Rourke hopes, conversely, to find the single note that ties together all sound. [David Strauss]

Outburn (USA):

Quirky, volatile Guitartistry: Fascinating walls of wiry sound stretched and kneaded by the prolific Christian Fennesz (the enclosed info street has him playing with a multitude of bands and musicians who reside on the outskirts of experimental). The music was created using only guitar and powerbook, and recorded in his back garden; the impression of space is quite prevalent when the guitar's feedback and slippery noise wails to the open sky, while more earthbound, the sneaky cadences of manipulation are jittery like ants attacking an intruding beetle. 010 sweeps down on wings of wind-battered sound, wings that flutter, flap and glide. 013 on the other hand, is nervous and twitchy, gurgling spastically before slipping into disjointed sequences that mesh musicality with static noise. Huge chords tumble forth during 014, coagulating like blood from a wound after the bleeding has ceased, slow and thick, while underneath, mesmerizing slashes of corrosive noise slice into fresh veins and arteries, forcefully draining more blood. The whole disc is a balance of clash and resolution between disparate sonic entities, a balance of stormy turbulence and itchy experimentalism. [JC Smith]

Resonance (UK):

In the last issue of Resonance, a single by Fennesz nearly drove me gaga with excitement with its melding of melodic themes and PowerBook manipulations. His new CD on the reliably recondite Touch Label, the snappily titled 'plus forty seven degrees 56' 37' minus sixteen degrees 51' 08' (TO: 40) is a step sideways into textural geography. The lavish packaging provides scant clues to what's going on, with each track illustrated by a pictures of natural landscapes with some evidence of human activity. On certain tracks the music seems to have been atomised into thousands of tiny stippling sounds with extreme stereo panning splitting the music into two parallel event sequences. Track 5 (called .. er.. '014') is a noisy drone - a chord almost drowned out by caustic white noise which stops dead after eight minutes. It's illustrated by pylons. Occasionally a texture appears which suggests that Fennesz's guitar may be the source, but stays tantalisingly out of reach. The CD is a magnificent and infuriating conundrum, and I love it. More fancy packaging comes with Pierre-Andre Arcand's 'Le Livre Sonore' (ohm/avtr 013) the jewel case of which is stuffed with a super illustrated book of the artist's sculptures and installations. They look great. Unfortunately the CD (which seems almost tagged on as an afterthought) is a bit dull. Consisting of a heavily echoed microphone snuffling around various bits of debris, sounding a lot like small loops of Adam Bohman, but lacking any convincing sense of structure. Even with the aid of the book it failed to hold my attention. I'd like to see an exhibition of his work though... [Richard Sanderson]

Grooves (USA):

The last anyone heard of Fennesz he was doing strange re-assembly jobs on "Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)" and "Paint It Black", but his new album is entirely sourced from his own material, performed on laptop and guitar in his garden over the summer. As tends to be the case with those associated with Touch and/or Mego, Plus Forty Seven Degrees is certainly not an easy listen and a fair way from his earlier Hotel Parallel album to boot.

Processed feedback is the order of the day here, and plenty of it. The first track is the least adventurous but the most accessible: A throbbing feedback riff reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine hovers in the midst of icy laptop scree. Highly desirable. Subsequent tracks (there are no titles; the tracks are merely numbered from "010" to "017") are almost entirely given over to computer processing, organized in irregular patterns of blips and static to give a stuttering impression. Over time, though, the tracks do develop their own identities. A real highlight is "014", 7 minutes of cacophonous quasi-industrial computer drone with half-formed shapes stacked up behind. This tracks gets right to the innermost parts of your brain in a way few others do - very much like Farmers Manual if they decided to pursue ideas for longer than a minute and a half. None of the other tracks measure up to this, but they do have enough variations in their grainy resonance to keep you guessing what might emerge next.

It's difficult to know exactly what to make of Fennesz. His music is undoubtedly of a psychedelic nature. However, there's no particularly obvious reference to drugs here and the record's packaging (all rural scenes from Austria) doesn't exactly lend any clues about his intent. Maybe it's better just to immerse yourself in his mutating channels of noise without trying to figure out what it means. Chances are you'll find plenty to explore. [John Gibson]