In an interview with The Wire last year, Kid606 let slip that, like many electronic producers in his sphere, he could create an album in one night. He asserts that the software has gotten so good that making tracks is just that easy: Talent is kinda nice-- and probably adds something to the equation-- but it's not really required. There's no question that the perceptible dip in interest in experimental electronic music in recent years has something to do with the fact that there are so many labels, artists, and, above all, records that don't sound different enough from one another to warrant special attention.
But then there's Christian Fennesz. When it comes to recording under his own name, Fennesz works slowly: Venice is only his fourth full-length studio album in seven years, and his first since 2001's groundbreaking Endless Summer, which altered the perception of experimental electronic music with pop leanings. Fennesz has remained busy by remixing, collaborating, touring (both on his own and with FennO'Berg), and re-releasing his back catalog, but-- considering Kid606's admission-- three years is a long time between albums for an artist such as Fennesz.
With every album, Fennesz's music has become prettier and more accessible yet still retains his distinctive style-- and Venice is no exception. That's fortunate for the uninitiated because as Fennesz's reputation has grown, each new offering has served as the perfect introduction to his work. "Rivers of Sand" opens Venice with deep bass pedals working against pinched swoons of feedback. It's completely electronic, but this piece would also sound fantastic in an arrangement for strings. "Château Rouge" is in the vein of the bent instrumental pop of Endless Summer, with what sounds like an organ melody (simple, just a few notes) beset by synth gurgles and pinstripe bands of white noise. Its "middle-eight" is vertical howls of machine noise, but its purpose is the same as the bridge of any pop song-- to offer a variation on the themes presented earlier. "The Other Face" also feels as if Fennesz were taking some of the ideas from Endless Summer and pushing them in a different direction, here adding ethereal vocal samples to the buzzing mix.
The short track "Onsra" serves as an intro to Venice's centerpiece, "Circassian", which was written and performed with fellow avant guitarist Burkhard Stangl (who has previously worked with Fennesz as a member of Polwechsel). When people talk about Fennesz's Kevin Shields fixation they're thinking of tracks like this. "Circassian" drowns in loud, slightly out-of-tune power chords, each of which leads a long and happy life after the initial strum. The string reverberations multiply and mutate endlessly, making it possible to imagine cathedrals, a jet airplane passing through billowy clouds at 500mph, or the volatile racket of a tropical storm. Markus Schmickler gave it a shot, but no one does neo-shoegaze laprock as well as Fennesz.
On Venice, Fennesz also continues to dabble with pop. Last year, he collaborated with David Sylvian on the former Japan singer's Blemish, and that partnership continues here with "Transit". When a record contains only a single vocal track, the tendency is to place too much focus on it. That anomalous track always seems destined to summarize or "explain" the record somehow, yet the particular concerns voiced by Sylvian on "Transit" don't blend easily with its abstract aesthetic joys. Still, as a song, it works well and would have made a nice non-album single. Fennesz has demonstrated a sympathetic yet adventurous ear when supporting vocalists. On "Transit", a low organ sound anchors the tune but all sorts of strange explosions do the real work, simultaneously marking the changes and shifts in the song and reinforcing its structure. Fennesz flirts with a different kind of conventionality with "Laguna", a guitar duet with Stangl with a serious Morricone vibe.
Venice's quality extends beyond its sound. Touch proprietor Jon Wozencroft-- through his breathtaking design and photography-- continues to fight the good fight against records-as-pure-data by making the CD a value-added prospect. More importantly, the music is of a high standard. One thing that is made clear by Venice is that Fennesz is a composer who spends as much or more time crafting melodies and chords as he does searching for the perfect texture. He works regularly with improvisers, but his records under his own name could not be more orderly, with discrete sections carefully structured to maximize their emotional impact. (The symphonic nature of last year's Live in Japan is strongly present here.) Thanks in part to that emotional heft, I have a feeling that long after many of the experimental electronic records from the past ten years disappear, we'll continue to reach for the works of Fennesz.
