I searched the internet trying to find the answer to my question: How much of the English language has fallen into disuse over, say, the last couple of centuries? This has suddenly become important to me because of the latest album from Austrian electronic musician Christian Fennesz, Black Sea.
My own personal vocabulary limits my attempt to describe the audio imagery to you. However, these restrictions simply do not seem to apply to a mind such as the one Fennesz himself possesses. When he locks himself away in his studio, alone, immersed in his work, he creates a canvas to express the labyrinth of sounds within his mind. If he has any limitations at all, it is only those surrounding the technology of trying to reproduce what he can hear. His mind has seemingly endless possibilities.
Black Sea is the fourth solo album from Fennesz, and his first in over four years. The last, 2004’s Venice, further developed a journey that started with his first EP Instrument in 1995. Solo albums Hotel Paral.lel, released three years later, and the breakthrough, Endless Summer in 2001, earned him a wider recognition which was underlined by the critical response to Venice.
Black Sea is bleak on first listen. The cover of the album, beautifully photographed by Jon Wozencroft, is also bleak, as is the name of the album itself. The titles of the tracks within the album confirm this. “Grey Scale,” “Vacuum,” and “Perfume For Winter” seem to wash the album with a sense of anticipated stillness.
It’s when you sit absorbed within the complexities of Fennesz’s work that the greyness slowly lifts. It is like peering through a sea mist at vague, blurred objects in the half light until you finally focus and an outline gradually appears. For Fennesz to hear this in his musical mind and then to transfer those images not only onto a flat piece of plastic but into the mind of the listener is nothing short of remarkable.
You won’t be surprised to hear that Black Sea is darker, and more mysterious than anything he has done before. For this album, Fennesz appears to have used a whole range of distortion, mostly guitar orientated. He creates wave upon wave of intricate texture. You can almost see him experimenting in his solitary studio with the positioning of mics, and the fabric of the room itself, to try and capture the exact sound like a genie in the bottle before finally releasing it again. The guitar plays a vital role ranging from total sparseness to a multi-textured reverb. For over fifty minutes you are locked into a dream-like sequence of music that transcends accurate description. The power of the music will provoke different imagery for different people.
Article comments
1 - Pamelamsb
Your site is like a blonde withy a brain. I love it. Jokes apart, very informative article and equally impressive design.