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Fennesz, "Endless Summer"
This album is the auditory equivilent to a free vacation or perhaps thesoundtrack to the afterglow of an exceptionally good lay. The 3rdfull-length from Laptop wiz-boy Fennesz finds him taking time out ofhis busy schedule of collaborations and multimedia orchestrations tofinally bring us a follow-up to "Hotel Paral.lel". Consisting of amagical assortment of clicks, heavily processed guitar strummings, andPita-esque distorted strings, it is surprisingly upbeat compared tomost of the Mego camp. It's very detailed, as you would expect fromFennesz, but also contains many freeform/pseudorandom evolvingelements, digitally tweaked for maximum ecstasy. Simple melodiesreverberate and repeat while detached particles of sound swirl and buzzin a fog around them creating dense, yet listenable structures. In creating, deconstructing and re-assembling his music, Fenneszshowcases different styles throughout the CD: from the guitar-filledtitle track with several movements, the crackling static-filled stringson the verge of resonance in "happy audio", to melodic Oval-esque"skipping CD" (tm) stylings of "before I leave". Unfortunately, somemight find these processing methods slightly gimmicky or an overuse ofDSP-noodling. However, if one can accept the minimal, competentlytweaked nature of the songs, it is easy to see that they are used toshowcase genuine emotion and makes Fennesz's "difficult third album"not seem so difficult after all - he makes it look easy.
Perhaps suffering from recently being prematurely hyped in the press asbeing "classic", "Endless Summer" is neverless a startlingly good albumboth on its own or placed next to releases of all his laptopcontemporaries; suffice to say that it's brilliant music for beginningyour day or ending it, regardless of season.
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