Digital whirlwinds that ruffle the course, artificial screeches that tear the sails, synthetic waves that fill the lungs. The sea of glitch is no less dangerous than its seven brothers.
And what if the vessel were the one on the cover?
And what if Fennesz—caught in a thousand featuring moments—was still pondering how to close the perpetually open bracket of "Endless Summer"? That medley of scents clinging to the horizon line, those pieces in continuous evolution that seemed to stretch towards infinity.
At that time, Fennesz was adrift near the Lagoon. And an angel took the form of the Winged Lion. And looking down from above at the vastness of the waters, the angel saw Fennesz and remembered Saint Mark. And then with a thunderous voice said: "Pace a te, mio evangelista. Qui riposerà il tuo corpo."
But if the body rests, in Venice Fennesz's guitar-processing becomes the Doge in pectore and reshapes the city's moods through the game of continuous disguises.
If insane crackles slip between the scent of the canals and the maze of ecstatic samplers, the atmosphere quickly adorns itself with a sugary lightness in which a pesky guitar play and mocking glitch pull Pantalone's beard in a secluded campiello.
Fennesz has many masks and in "Venice" he uses them all.
A meditative ambient veil reflects on what lies behind the appearance of things like young Proust sitting at a table in a Historical Café, but then an exuberant droning worthy of the most ascensional Eluvium completely overturns the climax, throwing confetti and streamers at the Carnival floats.
And then a crackling and muddy electronic with petroleum-colored hues that winks at the organicity of Robert Rich; sparse arpeggios soaked with a sense of the irreparable like the steps of the condemned in procession to the Bridge of Sighs; a meticulous laptop work that carves out polychrome collages like the mosaics of the Basilica of San Marco; even a vaguely fatalistic crooner who does not fear for his pound of flesh and signs the contract looking Shylock in the eyes.
But Fennesz's journey will not stop in Venice. No Tadzio could disturb him, no cholera epidemic could kill him.
Do you still see the cover? Isn't there a second little boat in the background? He used it to return to the open sea, towards his cupio dissolvi, into the jaws of "Black Sea."
Loading comments slowly
