A live album from a laptop artist is a pretty bold concept, though if anyone could pull it off it would be Christian Fennesz, an Austrian laptop/ guitar composer who has established a formidable reputation over the past few years as one of the most distinctive and original manipulators of electronic sounds around via his releases on Mego, Touch, Erstwhile, and Grob. Though he often works with warm, heavily processed, fuzzed up textures, tones and washes of static, his sounds are almost always immediately identifiable, thanks to the compositional care taken in ordering what has previously seemed erratic, and the emotional resonance with which he ladens these sounds. In recent times he has developed somewhat of an obsession with nostalgia, creating a wistful marriage between static based noise and melody, best evidenced on his gorgeous Endless Summer release, which with sun drenched vistas of warbling corroded guitar, took electronic music from the bedroom out to (of all places) the beach.
Clearly intoxicated by the world he created on Endless Summer, it’s taken a while for the follow up to appear, but in the meantime Live in Japan, is an account of the Fennesz live show. At least partially improvised, his 43 minute set (one single track) begins in a gentle swarm of static, with strange floating off kilter melodies before evaporating into a drone and dipping into some wispy disjointed acoustic guitar work and reprocessed elements of Codeine from his Field Recording’s release last year. Over the course of the set he also repeatedly touches upon elements of Endless Summer, with warm hues of static lapping the guitar gently like waves as he effortlessly steers from one idea to another, to create gorgeous moments of evocative atmospheres one moment, or getting all improvisational with harsh flecks and buzzes of static the next. Like every good live (rock?) show, the highlight is in the encore, a beautiful and intimate version of Caecilia, one of the most emotive tunes from his Endless Summer set. Laptop sets are regularly accused of being unengaging, and perhaps visually this may have been as boring as watching paint dry, but with sounds this good, it transcends the visual and simply no longer matters. Fennesz has drawn a line in the sand. This is going to be a benchmark..
Bob Baker Fish
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