It’s light tentative work, gentle and respectful, as musicians from two entirely separate worlds search for some common ground on this highly evocative duo album. The urge would be to allow Austrian guitarist and sound artist Christian Fennesz to create a bed of sound and allow Japanese pianist/ composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (Yellow Magic Orchestra), the elder statesmen, the luxury of soloing over it, yet if you’ve had any contact with either artist you’d know they’d be unlikely to take such an easy option. Instead they adopt an egalitarian approach, the shifting digital sounds are as important as the mannered piano runs – and the mix supports this with both participants on equal footing. Whilst many of the tunes feel amorphus, almost structureless as a whole, the duo weave in and out of each other, clearly plotting their shifts and movements together. It’s all quite low key, almost ambient with the mood very cinematic, feeling late night/early morning. This is Fennesz at his most beautiful, most restrained, his textured guitars and shimmering evocative digital sands bubble around Sakamoto’ distracted almost whimsical piano runs, offering an intangible counterpoint to Sakamoto’ at times quite musical offerings. Whilst apparently composed by sending files between New York and Vienna, it still feels quite loose and explorative without feeling like anything is out of place. Closest comparisons would have to come from the relationship between sound design and score in cinema, yet where in cinema these relationships are often transitory and you get the feeling that the two are actually competing with each other, here they’re incredibly unified as a rule. Cendre is a work of intelligence and beauty. It’s everything you would hope for when two artists from separate worlds work together, rather than one dominating the other, they’ve found a third world and it’s sublime.
Bob Baker Fish
