In the wake of the critical and (by Mego standards) commercial success of last year's Endless Summer, Touch presents Field Recordings 1995-2002, an assortment of compilation contributions, soundtrack work, unreleased tracks, and remixes from laptop wunderkind Fennesz-- plus the entirety of the notable 1996 debut EP Instrument. It's interesting to hear Fennesz again stripped of the conceptual cues that played a part in Endless Summer's success. In addition to the fantastic music, Endless Summer was a triumph of small label indie marketing. It's true that it had thematic unity and a good half the tracks followed the pattern of the Plays single, dissecting the structures of pop music in the context of an abstract computer-composed record. But if Fennesz had given the album a title like XRtN8ts and slapped some vector graphics on the cover, there's no way in hell the words "beach" or "boys" would have made it into a single review.
So Field Recordings 1995-2002 is a great opportunity to interface with Fennesz' music directly, mediated only by the absolutely gorgeous Jon Wozencroft photography and design that adorns most Touch releases. And Christian once again brings the goods, with a handful of stunning tracks, a few more very good ones, and a nice overall portrait of his development as an artist. It may technically be a c: drive disk cleanup, but Field Recordings is strong throughout, and serves as a solid Fennesz sampler.
It's particularly instructive to hear Fennesz's work in early form on the five tracks that comprise Instrument. He still seemed to be finding his footing at that stage, and these tracks are much more readily identifiable as pure IDM than what came after. "Instrument 3" has the kind of skittery, insanely quick beats-as-texture that Autechre would fully commit to by the time of LP5 and EP7, and "Instrument 4" isn't terribly far from the more disturbing end of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II. The other two Instrument tracks show Fennesz's talent with drone construction, but the occasional intrusion of not-terribly-imaginative beats holds "Instrument 1" back.
The remainder of Field Recordings is a highly appealing hodgepodge. Two tracks involve remix work with inventive composer Ekkehard Ehlers. Fennesz' beautiful version of Ehlers material "\xDFetrieb" does wonders with the string and organ textures, combining the 20th Century classical air with wispy electronics. Fennesz's remix of "Coedine", a track by Ehlers and Stephen Mathieu, is no less beautiful, awash with more organ and acoustic guitar strumming, and given tension by unpredictable patches of static.
The inclusion of "Menthol" from Clicks + Cuts 2 is welcome to anyone who missed that compilation. This track's warm bed of gurgling processing ranks it as on obvious precursor to Endless Summer. "Good Man" is an unreleased gem of recent vintage that shows Fennesz at peak interest in combining acoustic strums with seemingly unrelated but complimentary laptop squiggles (whatever his skill level on the instrument, Fennesz is again content to pepper his electronic work with rudimentary chords).
Several short tracks culled from soundtrack projects point to a more subtle side of Fennesz. "Stairs" is from the soundtrack to the film Blue Moon, and it's basically a bed of quaking bass pedals mixed with hiccups and pops. "Invendoo" is kind of a laptop version of Nurse with Wound, all eerie scrapes and the sucking sound of container lids being pried open. Continuing his interest in covers, "Namewithnohorse" destroys the chords to America's "Horse With No Name", burying the strums in an avalanche of distortion. This sounds interesting but the development is lacking-- it's easily the worst track here.
Still, Field Recordings 1995-2002 affirms Fennesz's status among the most gifted artists working the abstract end of the electronic music landscape. References to his established style affirm his strengths, and some of the odd tangents point to the dozen interesting directions his music might yet take. This doesn't rank with his last two full lengths, but Field Recordings is a must for any serious fan.
