Braving the Black Sea
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Label: Touch
Year: 2008
Format: CD/LP
Fourth solo album from Austrian guitar musician, Christian Fennesz
Christian Fennesz needs little introduction – having gone from strength to strength and establishing himself as a leading guitar musician with an exceptional gift for taking the stringed instrument and thwarting its sound into numerous shapes and sizes to create lush, distorted soundscapes that defy distinguishing the original instrument.
On Black Sea, Fennesz remains every bit the master of his genre and finds new ways to portray his grasp on the guitar-based music genre in addition to satisfying old fans with a seaward journey that is both open and spacious, dangerous and closely felt and with a combination of guitar sounds both processed and distorted to his trademark warm and fuzzy washes meeting the gently strummed melodies – creating atmosphere where the alien and distant meets the familiar and near.
Ever present in Fennesz’ later works is the influence by the sea and water element; moving on from both the floating and longing Endless Summer and the canals of Venice, Black Sea both suggests the presence of a watery influence in title as well as in form – melodious ripples of static, synth waveforms and fuzzy textures, electro-acoustic guitar harmonious distorted to a flowing body of liquid, ranging from the stormy sea to gentle waves and breaking turfs.
Musical climax is encountered on this album in three pieces that stand out, Grey Scale, Vacuum (only on CD-version) and the closing track, Saffron Revolution, the latter track preempting the album with its release on digital and 7” vinyl. Vacuum is minimalistic and subtle in its splendor, with gently plucked guitar strings that come out muted and tinkering strings hovering lightly in the background all the while an lofty synth carries the song forward – an excellent study of Fennesz’ compositional and engineering techniques – erasing the boundaries of each of the constitutional instruments in use (guitar, laptop, synths) to the point in which all sound becomes one mass of ambiguity – with the resulting duality of something strangely isolated yet intensely personal. Saffron Revolution is similar in form, angelic synths float above the track while tenderly strummed guitar chords roll back and forth in a lulling theme. In the background glides a wash of white, crackling noise and alien, hollow sounds of synth reminiscent of a turbine – simply put a strikingly, lovely close to the album that displays Fennesz’ expertise at instrumentation and creating fuzzy soundscapes with smeared out electro-acoustic guitars.
If you live close to Oslo, make sure to catch Fennesz when he visits again both for By:larm on the weekend 21st February, 2009 to collaborate with the Norwegian duo, Food, and then again for a solo live performance on 4th April, 2009.
Highly recommended, both live and on album.
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