Fennesz
Bécs

Summer Listening #2   

It had been launched as “Endless Summer part two,” and the splashes and foam of the waves depicted in the playful opener “Static Kings,” with the carefree whirl of the folk guitar perfectly integrated into the electronic textures (all of which is quite “endless summer”), could confirm it: the truth is that the latest full-length from the Austrian musician, released (six years separate it from “Black Sea”), is once again something marvelous and different from what was produced in the past.

The paradox is that when you are an artist and you play to express feelings (and therefore, I add, to evoke emotions), and at the same time you are a great and honest musician, with the sole fault of having redefined contemporary electronics, it is in fact difficult to make even a single misstep, and at the same time, it is very easy to disappoint those expecting a revolution at every turn. Despite, as the usual sages will say, the revolutionary scope of an album like “Endless Summer” will remain objectively unsurpassable, and the heights reached, in terms of class and formal balance, by “Venice” and “Black Sea” will be difficult to repeat, “Bécs” remains a great work in itself. Without revolutionizing an established style, and giving more strength to the guitar instrument (which was what we liked most), thus approaching even further the post-rock universe (which was the direction we all wanted to be taken), the work does not pale in comparison to its predecessors, positioning itself stylistically halfway between the last two (“Venice” and Black Sea”) and the masterpiece “Endless Summer.” In other words, it is a work that knows how to look back by drawing on the experiential baggage gained in the meantime. It avoids above all what was the main danger: flowing pleasantly, yes, but with the sensation that craftsmanship ended up prevailing.

The fact is that Christian Fennesz now enjoys such a status that his art does not need to be defined by referencing other names and that, as an author, he can afford to evolve simply by remolding himself. “Bécs,” in some ways, therefore, constitutes the sum of an entire career: for this reason, perhaps for the first time, we do not find in a work by Fennesz that homogeneity that has always characterized each of his individual releases (a rigor that, however, occasionally caused his music to derail beyond the domain of the prolix): far from being a flaw, this greater variety of approaches constitutes the greatest strength of “Bécs,” as well as its distinctive character, that is, being a kaleidoscope capable of embracing very different moods, much like the colorful cover suggests.

Seven tracks, seven different visions of a single eye/soul: so if the aforementioned opening track is an excursion with sunny and carefree tones that showcases the brightest side of the Viennese musician (truly goosebump-inducing, if not tear-inducing, the change in pace of the guitar in the central break), immediately to counterbalance it, we find the darkest track, the restless “The Liar,” built on solid mechatronic patterns that reiterate with relentless obsessiveness, while the hyper-distorted guitar has the opportunity to develop and disperse into pitch-black drones. As a synthesis of both, we find the very long (ten-minute duration) “Liminality,” which offers us the typical Fennesz-style crescendo—that perfect fusion between intimate glitch and impetuous post-rock, of which Our artist, especially live, is an undisputed master: opened by timid counterpoints of acoustic guitar, the track will soon find consistency, vigor, and courage in the persistent mounting of a robust electrified arpeggio, just moderated by backgrounds of keyboards that zigzag sinuously, penetrating a viscous and fiery matter. 

To put things in place comes the providential “Pallas Athene,” a celestial organ interlude, during which the Viennese wears the robes of the cosmic courier and discovers for us an ambient peace oasis that allows us to catch our breath for a moment. The beauty of “Bécs” lies precisely in its chromatic richness, in its perfect alternation of fullness and emptiness, of chaos and absences, always traversed by that fil rouge that is Fennesz’s aesthetic/poetic approach, devoted to the expression of a fragile and at times incandescent intimacy. Part of the credit, in this lush flowering of sounds and colors, goes to the various collaborators (Martin Brandlmayr and Tony Buck on percussion, Cédric Stevens on synthesizer, Werner Dafeldecher on bass), called to give more consistency to a sound that has always loved to develop teetering between digital and analog.

Having crossed the midpoint, we head towards the conclusion of the work by retracing the same path in the opposite direction: the title track resumes the distorted and explosive sounds of the third track and, even more than in that one, presses more convincingly on the distortion pedal (so that we could bring certain weird-black metal stylistic features into play, something that is very fashionable to say today in the electronic field—even if, beyond all preconceptions, a track like this could frankly be hosted in a work like “Filosofem” by Burzum). “Sav” is another indispensable parenthesis, which, however, has very little celestial about it: like the second track, the predominant color is black, although here the drive of the electric guitar is replaced by the dark meditation of an ambient with vague esoteric moves, where the heavy sounds of the synthesizers are traversed and shaken by the emergence of a restless and jagged subcutaneous noise. It's as if (despite those who said that “Bécs” would be a reprise of the “beach” masterpiece of 2001) the sky of the ”endless summer” were crossed by threatening clouds. Or perhaps, more simply, isn't it the end of Summer, in Venice, staying at Hotel Paral.lel and gazing out over a dense and calm Black Sea?

Sketching, with the soft and delicate colors of sunset, the conclusion of an intense experience, are the clean, lightly reverberated sounds of the acoustic guitar of "Paroles," a brief rite of purification where, finally, droning interferences find no place: this is the seal with which closes yet another happy birth of an artist who, more than three decades after his debut, has no intention of throwing in the towel and stopping to move us.

A great one.