FENNESZ Endless Summer (Editions Mego)

Christian Fennesz is an Austrian musician, and “Endless Summer” was originally released in 2001; it’s been reissued with new (and superior) cover art and two extra tracks. It’s a delicious album: like Boards Of Canada meeting My Bloody Valentine, it marks the point where music recedes into pure texture, like some experiment from the furthest reaches of Eno’s imagination. Found rhythms that seem to have come from the random loops generated by the locked grooves at the ends of vinyl sides lope through pixelated soundscapes; it’s like finding sweet music in the static between radio stations, the sonic equivalent of stereoscope pictures.

During “A Year In A Minute” fluffy wisps of distortion rise and fall on a tidal melody, and “Caecilia” gently gurgles its misheard tunes and half-forgotten rhythms in the listener’s ear. “Before I Leave” emulates the woodpecker ticking of a badly scratched CD to surprisingly musical effect, whilst “Badminton Girl” bounces like Zebedee with a contact mic. The album’s hypnotic magnum opus is the charmingly titled 11-minute “Happy Audio”, in which lock groove rhythms are gradually consumed by flickering static.

“Endless Summer” is the kind of album – like, but also completely unlike, of course, “Trout Mask Replica” – that requires the listener to suspend disbelief, and at least attempt to cast aside their preconceptions about what constitutes music, to meet it halfway. Blinkers off, it can be a sublime experience.

Home