.Fennesz

Black Sea

Ostensibly an avant-gardist, guitarist, and laptop musician,
Christian Fennesz has become a traditionalist of sorts in recent years
— his music now has much in common with Brian Eno’s ambient
recordings of the late ’70s and early ’80s. The albums Eno made in this
vein are interesting enough to warrant a listener’s full attention yet
pleasant enough to ignore. The same could be said of Fennesz’s latest,
Black Sea.

The album bears little resemblance to the Austrian’s late-’90s
electronica, which flirted with rhythmic chaos and unpleasant tones.
Fennesz abandoned this approach with 2001’s Endless Summer, an
album as bright and tuneful as its title and cover (which looked like
the poster for a surfing movie) suggested. What seemed like a fluke was
actually the beginning of a new direction. The records following
Endless Summer — which also include 2004’s Venice
and last year’s Cendre — are popular in large part because
they embrace simple melodies and uncomplicated rhythms. But Fennesz’s
post-millennial output would be mere Muzak were it not for its emphasis
on grit and granularity. Black Sea‘s title track, for example,
begins with a random assortment of digital bomb bursts, and those
explosions clear the way for an impressionistic guitar progression that
soon disappears inside a dense sonic fog. Befitting its title, Black
Sea
is the darkest of Fennesz’s recent efforts, yet it is no less a
balancing act than any of its immediate predecessors. “Black Sea,” for
all of its abstraction, is brightened by a melody that runs like an
undercurrent through its steady stream of changes. And on the flip, the
album’s best shot at a single, “Perfume for Winter,” is all but
obscured by thick digital distortion — it sounds as if it was
initially written for a love scene but wound up on a corrupted hard
drive.

One gets the sense that, even as he slouches toward easy listening,
Fennesz is wary of making music that is too beautiful or unblemished.
Perhaps more than any other Fennesz record, Black Sea
exemplifies the kind of ambient music that’s never so seamless that you
forget it was made by a human being. (Touch)

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