Latest Release
- MAY 31, 2024
- 1 Song
- Cendre · 2007
- Cendre · 2007
- Endless Summer · 2001
- Venice · 2004
- Endless Summer · 2001
- Agora · 2019
- Cendre · 2007
- Black Sea · 2008
- Hotel Paral.lel · 1997
- Cendre · 2007
Essential Albums
- Endless Summer is titled in reference to the Beach Boys, though the music it contains draws less from the orchestral pop sensibility of Pet Sounds than it does Brian Wilson’s emotional openness and musical intricacy. Traces of pop music run through Endless Summer, though they are usually obscured either by fractural electronics, as on “Made In Hong Kong,” or huge sheets of ambient noise, as on “”A Year In A Minute” and “Got to Move On.” In “Caecilia,” formless sheets of sound slowly coalesce into fragile, heartfelt melodies. The album is a dialogue between the guitar playing that is at the heart of most of these compositions and the layers of ambient noise that surround it. These elements become so integrated over the course of the album that it becomes impossible to differentiate between the organic and the treated, and on “Shisheido,” the guitar and electronics fuse completely to create a whole new sonic color. Like Brian Wilson before him, Fennesz has created a musical work intensely intimate and fathomlessly far-reaching.
- 2023
- 2016
Artist Playlists
- Desolate, twilight hour compositions from a unique guitarist.
- The sounds that inspired this Austrian electronic icon.
- A tug-of-war between lyrical melodicism and moody abstraction.
- 2012
Live Albums
Compilations
About Fennesz
The secret to Austrian glitch and computer-music innovator Christian Fennesz’s appeal outside of the hermetic universe of avant-garde electronic music is his penchant for melodic and harmonic beauty. His formative noise and avant-garde experiments of the early '90s found him degenerating unlikely source material beyond recognizability, whether it was sounds from his central instrument—the electric guitar—or Rolling Stones and Beach Boys tracks on his infamous 1998 7-inch record Plays. Eventually, Fennesz began to integrate generative software that has now become ubiquitous, like Max/MSP and SuperCollider, into his compositional process, with 1997’s Hotel Paral.lel representing his first significant foray into this territory. In 2001, he cemented his auteur status with the widely acclaimed Endless Summer, in which balmy guitar chords and samples peek through rippling sheens of noise. Fennesz’s collaborations with avant-pop artists like David Sylvian and Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous, as well as other composers, have led new fans to his music. Among these releases, his muted and gorgeous duo album with Ryuichi Sakamoto—2007's Cendre—remains one of the most inviting entries in his discography.
- GENRE
- Electronic