Fennesz
Remember 1997? Remember when “Firestarter” was the hit single, and that blathering cockney idiot was all we saw on MTV? Remember how ‘electronica’ was predicted to invade America, and how we would all soon be raving like the Brits? I do, unfortunately.
I also remember that ‘electronica’ never took hold, and that Prodigy sucked.
However, what most people don’t know about ‘electronica’ (I’ve always despised that term), is the aftermath. After the 1997 debacle, electronic musicians divided into a number of factions, and went deeper underground. Electronic artists were not longer concerned with the mainstream; their MO, whether in IDM, pastoral or glitch, was the pursuit of digital music with emotional depth. Album’s like Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children (1998), Dntel’s Life is Full of Possibilites (2001), Prefuse 73’s One Word Extinguisher (2003), and M83’s Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts (2003) all exposed the inherent emotional beauty (and infinite possibilities) of electronic music.
Then you have an artist like Christian Fennesz. Fennesz makes noise. Yes, noise. No, not in the Cage or O’Rourke senses of the word. Fennesz’s concoction is different. It is, without a doubt, the most gorgeous and rewarding noise ever conceived.
His newest release, Venice is the follow-up to his 2001 masterpiece, Endless Summer, and shares many of that album’s production techniques. Yet whereas the latter was an ode to Brian Wilson’s sun-drenched, SoCal pop, the former pays homage to Kevin Shields’ leviathan reverb and Neil Halstead’s aphasic atmospheres. “Rivers of Sand” is a flutter of swirling synths, and cavernous bass tones, and “Laguna” is a mélange of guitar work. “Circassian,” at its glacial pace, is a cascading, power-chord symphony and centerpiece of an album brimming with emotion.
With very few missteps (“Transit,” the collaboration with Japan’s David Sylvan, is a glaring one), Venice reveals in itself an imbricate masterwork; one that helps define the depth and promise of electronic music in a way that no one could have ever forseen.
-- Phil DePaul, 01/15/05
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