Expanding on an idea that had first been embraced by
Seefeel and that had infected countless British
artists (Flying Saucer Attack,
Experimental Audio Research),
Vienna-based guitarist Christian Fennesz
has made a career out of heavily treated guitar drones and noises.
Fennesz debuted with the four-track EP Instrument (Mego, 1995).
The album Hotel Paral.Lel (Mego, 1997) represented
the first major expression of his vision.
It would also remain his harshest work, influenced by industrial
music, by Autechre's digital techno and by
Merzbow's free-form noise.
Fennesz, basically, introduced himself as a composer of electronic music
for electric guitar.
Fennesz marked his territory between
post-electronic musique concrete and post-ambient ambience
with
#2, a violent mass of sustained noises moving along the spectrum,
Nebenraum, a wavering tone that dissolves into a limping proto-melody,
Blok M, a morphing beat for a rhythm-less music,
Santora, sounding like a dying motorcycle engine,
Delhi Plaza, a march of miasmatic robots,
Fa, a series of agonizing drones,
Traxdata, a flow of violent discontinuities,
etc.
It often sounded like Throbbing Gristle turned
into chamber music.
The single Plays (Mego, 1998), that deconstructs two classics of rock
and roll, is another powerful manifestation of this metabolic process.
Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56'37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51'08" (Touch, 1999)
was to My Bloody Valentine
what the early works had been to
Throbbing Gristle:
it wasn't noise for the sake of noise but a living organism of sound effects.
Sidereal tones give birth to a distorted melody in 010 that enters
an endless loop of repetition.
After the random intergalactic beeps and glitches of the brief
011, Fennesz delves into the unnerving and chaotic ecosystem of
012, reminiscent of early computer music.
A feast of sharp frenzied tones in 013 mutates into a
fractured melody that interferes with videogame sounds and assorted
digital improvisations.
A loud, relentless surf of noise engulfs 014 for eight minutes, whereas
015 stands as its alter-ego: a subliminal flow of sonic insects
(that a loud shrill drone briefly obscures).
The dadaistic impulse of abstract soundpainting was mediated by an elegant
dissection of acoustic properties.
Music for an Isolation Tank (Rhyz, 2000) continued the experiment
while softening the edges.
The music was still dense, at times massive, obscure, menacing, but not
impossible.
Afternoon Tea (february 2000 - Ritornell, 2000 - Weird Forest, 2010) was a collaboration among Keith Rowe, Paul Gough (Pimmon), Oren Ambarchi, Peter Rehberg (Pita), and Christian Fennesz that pioneered live hard-disc editing (via Powerbook software) as a new form of collective improvisation.
Magic Sound (Mego, 2000) and
Return of Fenn O' Berg (Mego, 2002)
document live performances with
Peter Rehberg (Pita) and Jim O'Rourke.
If the previous albums were philosophical treatises,
Endless Summer (Mego, 2001) is a poetic work, one that rediscovers the
power of melody in a world that is largely dissonant.
Thus the futuristic muzak of Made in Hong Kong,
in which melodic themes recur cyclically albeit transformed into descrete
sequences of digital events,
the sweet waves of distortions lulled by folkish guitar in Endless Summer,
Shisheido (a brief piano-based lullaby),
Caecilia (a nostalgic proto-tune emerging from the shapeless breathing of the electronics, perhaps the most poignant track),
"songs" that point towards a parallel universe of purely
melodic sounds, but visible to us only through the fuzzy prism of quantum
spacetime.
At the same time, Fennesz has not given up on his most extreme passions:
A Year in a Minute (cycling masses of organic drones),
Got to Move On (buzzing heaps of decomposing objects),
Before I Leave (a wavering organ-like intereference),
Happy Audio (ten minutes of crackling noise, signaling the end of
the "record") drill further down in the cells of that grid to test
the ultimate nature of matter.
Dawn (Grob, 2002) is a collaboration with
saxophonist Peter Van Bergen and keyboardist Gert-Jan Prins.
Field Recordings 1995:2002 (Touch, 2002) collects rarities, including
Instrument.
Wrapped Islands (Erstwhile, 2002) is a collaboration with the jazz improvisation ensemble
Polwechsel.
GRM Experience (Signature, 2004) was a collaboration among Christian Fennesz, Mika Vainio and Christian Zanesi.
Fennesz's treated-guitar glitch-pop reached another apex on
Venice (Touch, 2004), his most tenderly romantic work yet.
Most of the tracks exude the impressionist shoegazing quality of, say,
Seefeel, but some also rank among his most
touching artifacts:
Rivers of Sand, an elegy "sung" by a choir of distorted "voices",
Chateau Rouge, that toys with a cyclical melody yielding
an elegant rondo of computer music,
and The Stone Of Impermanence, a cacophonous quasi-metal "power-ballad"
for loud and distorted guitar that could have been a score for
Neil Young and that disappears into an
electrically charged vacuum.
At the same time, Fennesz's music was becoming ever more psychological.
The simple droning panorama of City Of Light projects a dejected and
almost lugubrious feeling.
The denser and louder drone of Circassian drowns a dancing lullaby.
The rhythmic Moebius strip of The Point Of It All unveils
neurosis and fear.
Transit was Fennesz's venture into vocal music, a somber ballad
(sung by David Sylvian), accompanied with banging guitar and brooding electronics.
Martin Brandlmayr (drums, percussion, vibraphone,
computer and piano), Werner Dafeldecker (double bass, tape delay and
computer) and Christian Fennesz (electric and acoustic guitar and
computer) improvised and then edited
Till The Old World's Blown Up And A New One Is Created (march 2005).
The 20-minute ambient EP Sala Santa Cecilia (Touch, 2005) is the product
of a laptop-based collaboration between Christian Fennesz and
Ryuichi Sakamoto.
It is self-indulgent and quite trivial.
It was followed by
Cendre (Touch, 2007).
Live In Japan (Autofact, 2007) documents one of his free-form improvisations.
the single Transition (Touch, 2008)
RegenOrchester XII (december 2006) was a quintet with
Franz Hautzinger on quartertone trumpet,
Christian Fennesz on guitar and computer,
Otomo Yoshihide on turntables and guitar,
bass and drums.
4G is the supergroup of Keith Rowe, Oren Ambarchi, Christian Fennesz and Toshimaru Nakamura, i.e. four former guitarists who mutated into digital composers. They debuted with the double-disc Cloud (Erstwhile, 2005) for guitars, electronics and laptop.
The EP June (Table Of The Elements, 2008) contained a piece that seemed
to hark back to industrial music.
Black Sea (Touch, 2008), his first solo album in four years,
again sculpted with guitar and computer, ranked as one of his most
poignant and gloomy works.
Fennesz excels at choreography.
The melancholy, evocative guitar postcard of Black Sea is sandwiched
between a grotesque ballet of videogame noise and a blurred nebula of debris.
The ecstatic "om" of Glide emerges from the emptiest depth of the
universe as a synchornized population of drones only to fade away even faster
than it came.
He is also a master of metamorphosis:
the wall of noise of The Colour Of Three slowly reveals a revolving
melodic core, like a fetus that is growing and maturing.
He still has the same subtle ear for timbres that he had in his early noisy
stage, and he proves it with the
cryptic undeveloped sounds of Glass Ceiling.
He is less impressive when adopting simpler strategies, like the
quiet fingerpicking of Grey Scale and the
placid ambient music of Vacuum.
The cascading tones and the shoegazing distortion of
Saffron Revolution merge to create a majestic stardust effect,
a rational apotheosis of sorts to a speech that was mostly incoherent.
Most of the pieces seemed to reflect the gloomy mood of the worldwide
economic recession,
with Saffron Revolution even sounding like a requiem for the modern world.
If a few pieces sound like mere experiments on textural decoration, the majority
constitute a rather plaintive and sober stream of consciousness, as if the
painter had turned philosopher again and was meditating on the future of the human
race by the shore of the vast cold sea.
The EP Seven Stars (Touch Tone, 2011), his first solo recording
since Black Sea, contains four uneventful meditative pieces.
Knoxville (2010) documents a live performance by
Christian Fennesz, guitarist David Daniell and drummer Tony Buck, and ranks as one of Fennesz's
most self-indulgent works, mostly devoid of any aesthetic value.
Flumina (2011) was a double-disc collaboration between
Ryuichi Sakamoto
and Christian Fennesz, with Sakamoto composing the piano
melodies and Fennesz "arranging" them electronically.
Fenn O'Berg's In Stereo (Editions Mego, 2010) was the most focused jam yet from the trio of Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke, and Peter Rehberg.
Fennesz also contributed to the soundtrack to a film by Austrian director Edgar Honetschlager. Aun (Ash International, 2012).
17.02.12 (2013) is a live performance.
After too many collaborations and "occasional" music, Fennesz returned to
his major artist vein with
Becs (Mego, 2014).
Static Kings
stages gentle guitar chords surfing over waves of electronic noise
and slowly drowns in the very blender that it has set in motion.
The high points are the
much more dramatic blizzards of distorted drones, namely
The Liar and Becs
(the former more savage, the latter lessened by a melody carefully hidden in the background).
Liminality unleashes violent shards of guitar strumming that pierce a
thick ether of distortion until the guitar basically crosses over to the other
side, from where we can still barely hear it, still alive and repeating its
monotonous call.
Alas, there is some filler,
like the facile glitchy ambient music of Sav, that any kid with a laptop can produce,
or like the fluttering pipe-organ pattern of
Pallas Athene, which would more properly belong to a relaxation
new-age album of the 1980s.
Even the acoustic finale of Paroles, perhaps meant as a philosophical
corollary, can hardly qualify as a stroke of genius.
Contributions by electronic keyboardist Cedric Steven,
free-jazz bassist Werner Dafeldecker,
Radian's drummer Martin Brandlmayr,
and the Necks' drummer Tony Buck
are virtually irrelevant: it is difficult what is what, so any virtuoso skill
is lost in the mayhem.
There's A Light That Enters Houses With No Other House In Sight (SamadhiSound, 2014) was a collaboration among Franz Wright (spoken word), Christian Fennesz ( guitar, laptop), David Sylvian (piano, sampling, laptop, electronics) and John Tilbury (piano).
It's Hard For Me To Say I'm Sorry (september 2015 - Mego, 2016) collects live improvisations by Christian Fennesz (guitar, laptop) and Jim O'Rourke (synthesizer).
Christian Fennesz's bedroom album Agora (2019) consists of four
lengthy compositions that rely more than ever on
computer manipulations.
The result is abstract, subliminal music that is alive and has a strategy.
In My Room (12:28) could be a sci-fi soundtrack: eerie pulsations morph into an ominous hissing drone which could be a field recording of electrical wires in a basement or of traffic in a tunnel, and, without even realizing it, we are slowly lulled into a Zen-like meditative atmosphere of a symphonic grandeur.
However, the other pieces are not just unstable but confused, hardly justifying
the duration.
Rainfall (11:57) begins with a stormy dissonance that turns into
oceanic waves, but after that it's all trivial doodling with computer software.
Agora (12:09) glides into cosmic tranquillity without any of the
pathos of old German kosmische musik.
Overall, this is an amateurish work by a musician who is beginning to rely
too much on the machine to compose his music.
