Fennesz

There's no general thread and I think there should be one. Agora is perfect. that's all i have to say for now lol.

Listening to Endless Summer now. It's aged quite well I think, still sounds fresh.

i only have the album that involved king midas sound.
tomorrow when hungover could be a good time to revisit it.

I love the “dub”/“instrumental disc on that one

have to say I’m pretty basic and prefer the plays/endless summer/Venice era but I admire all his stuff. Need to revisit Becs cause I thought it was pandering shit at the time but idk.

Agora is perfect. that's all i have to say for now lol.

I never listened to it when it came out, but I've been using for my bedtime music off and on for the last couple months. It's delightful.

One day last week when it seemed unconscionably hot and humid (thunderstorms procrastinating), I felt like I was getting sick and went home early, putting on Endless Summer and half-dozing through it. I hoped it might massage this clenched feeling I had. It didn't, quite, but I was reminded of how distinctive an experience it was at first — one of those rare albums I needed to play several times before it started to click (as an adult, anyway). Given the title, I heard the way the sound burns in and out of melody imagining climate change as music — like all the old sentiments would only be graspable at some point through partially submerged fragments and ravaged textures like these. I can't remember now if it was discussed it in that light — it might have seemed too obvious, too apocalyptic — but it always seemed right to me.

Need to revisit, but am pretty sure Venice will remain my recent fave--fantastic David Sylvian cameo, great atmosphere to that whole album AFAIR.

(By recent, I mean chronologically to me--I remember the Fennesz Plays single and Endless Summer having a stronger impact on me in my 20s)

fantastic David Sylvian cameo,

spotify singlehandedly ruined that song for me. it's funny to think that there was a time when i liked it so much that spotify thought that i should be the first song selected for the generated "radio" playlist that would start when reaching the end of an album or playlist. if i had been listening to something that involved a rock beat, the replacements' "swinging party" would be the first song selected. listening to jazz, it would probably be "the peacocks" with bill evans and stan getz. but following anything even vaguely ambient, even in the broadest definition of it, the next song would be fennesz's "Transit". the first 40 seconds of it seems to be an complementary coda to many albums, because i would never recognize exactly what it was until suddenly Sylvian's loud I HAVE LISTENED REPEATEDLY entered the mix. how many times have i fallen asleep to beautiful, quiet, lulling music only to be startled by Sylvian's barking statement that resonated with me more truly and annoyingly with every night it happened? finally i learned to turn off spotify's auto-Radio function, but not before i clicked the heart with a cross through it, next to "Transit", and only "Transit". sorry Sylvian!

I HAVE LISTENED REPEATEDLY
I HAVE LISTENED VERY WELL

lol I don't remember that at all, I only had Venice as like m4a files

can we talk about how amazing Field Recordings is? perfect example of an artist arriving fully formed w/ a unique sound

I have a lot of problems w/ the Endless Summer closing title track (it kills the mood for me) but I love the rest of it.

do not listen to that album on spotify, trust me. they're like "this guy likes ambient music, clearly. we've got the stats to back that up. but he likes music with singers too. what if i told you about a song that was ambient + singer. plus he already knows this song; he's listened to Venice 5 times this year - the whole thing, including the duet with the singer. it's dynamite: put it as the lead track on every playlist - I SAID DO IT!"

xp

I will heed this dire warning!

That's why I'm dorky about shuffling my massive mp3 library through Sonos vs. streaming services.

Black Sea is perfect, hugely underrated Fennesz album and my favorite to this day.

Will always be grateful I caught him last March as the next to last show I saw before everything started looking like it would shut down on that front.

i think jeff parker was the last show i saw, but i don't go to many shows. surprised it hasn't threaded yet

Black Sea is perfect, hugely underrated Fennesz album and my favorite to this day.

It's a toss-up between that one and Venice for me. I'd probably enjoy Endless Summer more if I was a Beach Boys fan.

i haven't listened to Agora yet. is it good?

the ones i go back to first are endless summer, black sea, and venice. but i haven't really listened to Field Recordings much (but i wills oon!)

It's great!

I've never heard a bad album from him, come to think of it.

haha, well yeah. "is it good?" is kind of a weird question with fennesz

If the underlying question is 'should I check it out asap?' then the answer is also yes!

Agora is especially good, yes

Should listen to on headphones while lying on the floor in total concentration??

Should I??

Because I might do that

I really like Bécs a lot

I think this guy is good and close listening would open up his work a lot more but the earlier stuff seems quite dry to me and the later stuff is pleasant enough to have on as background music so I haven’t given any of it the attention it would probably reward yet. it still feels weird that music as abstract as endless summer was as (relatively) popular as it was

that really moving part of endless summer where he filters the treble all the way down and it’s like you’re underwater in the ocean at nite <3

the title track, I mean

i kind of envy km listening to agora for the first time. you've got to listen to that first track loud imo. on speakers. not on spotify. get the bandcamp aiff! it's like $10 most of which will go to mr. christian fennesz. it's guitar drone digital noise music ffs, like hearing mbv live with no drums and everything slowed wayy down. you won't regret having a cd-quality copy! ok, done with my usual bs lol.

i feel like fennesz basically makes progressive and romantic music at heart but filtered through punk / noise / drone / minimalism. he has a very spacious sense of pacing. he's also making music that is very much about the guitar and its possibilities.

#justfenneszthoughts after having not listened to anything he's done in a long time. i sort of got in the rut people are talking about with him, where it's pleasant background music but i wasn't ever paying any prolonged attention. i think his music rewards listening with a little bit more awareness about how it develops over time. which is kind of antithetical to the place i came to his music from, thinking that it's all sort of punk and avant-garde, ironic and post-modern. i mean it is in the sense of his sound palette coming from like sonic youth and tony conrad and idk what, digital noise? but the pieces take the shape and earnestness and some of the tonality of idk impressionism or something.

I never felt this kind of music could have a "narrative" structure until I heard Black Sea. The title track and Glide are probably my two favorite compositions by the dude, and they tell a very visceral story to me with their structure and textural progressions. The transition from the opening whallop of noise into that lush and open sense of space, and the journey to the meditative wash of a loop that closes out the piece is nothing short of breathtaking.

Agora is an amazing record and probably my #2 of his albums. Perhaps his records with water/oceans on the cover are the ones to go for! BTW don't sleep on his Mahler Remixes either. More ethereal and less noise and guitar driven than his other work, but equally beautiful.

oh wow, i was just thinking, like, you know what this reminds me of (while listening to "we trigger the sun" from agora)? - is mahler! and i don't even think i was aware he had done mahler remixes, or maybe i just subconsciously absorbed it.

i gave agora a very loud headphones listen earlier, while doing chores and watercoloring. it was a great old time. first track "in my room" was indeed very very good, and the beach boys reference makes sense because it reminded me quite a bit of endless summer! i always love his work in that mode. (what is the most endless summer of his that is not endless summer?)

his remix of junior boys’ “last exit” is a high watermark of the 00s

My favorite Fennesz remix by a wide wide mile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NzfJeaFgOA

^ ^ btw, I consider this the last truly piece of transcendent music to come out of the NIN camp. But that's another discussion for another thread.

(what is the most endless summer of his that is not endless summer?)

probably Live In Japan, but that might be cheating

Anyway I thank you for this revival for prompting me to dig out Venice for the first time in a long while. Still great.

i just habitually checked my spam where all the bandcamp stuff goes and noticed there's a rerelease of this fennesz / sakatomo thing "cendre" originally released in 2007. and it's currently lowering my blood pressure / opening my third eye. so the moral of the story is, always check your spam.

Listening to Endless Summer now. It's aged quite well I think, still sounds fresh.

― mirostones, Saturday, April 10, 2021 3:29 PM (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Heh, at the Red Bull Music Academy thing, they played the track that sounds like a scracthed CD of 'Till I Die skipping, and asked him something like "what does this make you feel?" and he said "it sounds really old."

Not that i was in attendance lol i watched it on youtube of course

I was just listening to the ISIS Oceanic Remixes album collection (a perfect record IMHO) and the Fennesz remix that starts it is glorious.

Came out a little after Venice, which I consider an OK album, and before Black Sea, which seemed to really not say anything new at all. I agree the NIN remix is great, and scattered other stuff has been wonderful (including Agora) but TBH by and learge the stuff I return to the most is prior to Venice.
(I also find the Sakamoto collabs tedious though, so, just one raven's opinion...)

endless summer has dated well, alongside his other stuff. plenty of his work from that time was more forward thinking than a lot of electronica/laptop music now. i've been playing with the max/MSP patch ('ppooll') that he used/uses for guitar processing... now that *is* dated. incredible to think what he's done with it, though, working off-grid and outside of tempo.

I listened to Cendre all the time after it came out. I should revisit it.

I remember buying Black Sea on vinyl and being really disappointed it didn't include "The Colour of Three" and "Vacuum"

Still my favorite Fennesz though

fao UK ilx, he's playing hackney earth in december

pulled out agora again after a long while, still perfect.

i've been going back through the solo albums, don't think i ever heard becs, sorry for lack of accent i'm a lazy hick, and i think it was my favorite of the bunch besides agora.

I am way behind as well, thanks for the bump

Has anyone heard the 2010 vinyl reissue for Endless Summer that extends the album? The record’s d-side is an extended version of Happy Audio and I’m curious how long it is. Because a 20-minute version of that song might make me explore

yeah it's 15 minutes long

15 minutes? i'll take it!

Haven't seen many reviews of this one, but really enjoying this Fennesz/Ozmotic album:
https://ozmotic.bandcamp.com/album/senzatempo

i keep playing the solo albums that aren't endless summer this summer. at this point i'd rank them agora > becs > black sea > venice. venice is the only one i don't really love.

Black Sea my pick, all great tho

Hard to distinguish between the three last ones I find. Venice is the one I would mostl likely put on

15 minutes? i'll take it!