Listen between the spaces modern pop composition leaves blank in pursuit of cracking commercial codes and you discover something wondrous, music that shifts subtly on waves of static with no desire to discuss market strategies or licensing opportunities.
Christian Fennesz has long been an experimental musician of note, his previous three long-players attracting their share of acclaim; but here, on his fourth studio album, the Austrian focuses his attentions on the translation of a beauty so few stumble across in their about-face relationship with the perceived mainstream. ‘Black Sea’ is, at times, every bit as accessible as Sigur Rós; yet it also crackles with white noise, and its encircling drones are punctuated by the clattering of found-sound percussion – pots and pans shaking in a pantry, that sort of ambient effect.
The effect on the listener is one that triggers the fight or flee reaction: to some this will seem overly alien, its tonal lusciousness too enveloping; it will drown some who come to it. Perseverance rewards one with a significant emotional connection, however, so those who turn tail once the gull chirps of the opening title track make way for detuned radio fuzz muddled with heavenly sweeps are well advised to swallow their reservations and let the wash carry them.
At its most achingly open, all blue sky and endless horizon, ‘Black Sea’ taps into the otherworldly brilliance of Eno’s ‘Apollo’ LP (see also: Hammock and Stars Of The Lid); when it cranks up the dread, Fennesz delivers tension rather than cheap-trick frills: this is a seat-edge ride, not a slasher flick for bored teens. ‘Black Sea’ requires patience, investment of time and attention – play it when focused on pursuits other than enjoying music alone and you will miss the nuances so vital in its appeal.
For they are many and varied – each track plays out slowly, but shuffles its bulk in a very particular way and never once repeats what’s come before. So ‘Perfume For Winter’ balances warm strings with splashes of an icy pool and clouds of circuit-board fogginess; the very next offering, ‘Grey Scale’, tones down the motion, revealing itself every stretch by every yawn. It’s a bleary-eyed delight, and sets up the record’s sublime centrepiece ‘Glide’ very well indeed. Here, the most scintillating symphony is hijacked by laptop-wielding aggressors, who embellish the piece with a cacophonous veil of colour and volume that stuns the listener into pleasurable submission.
‘Black Sea’ is not an easy record. It will not flick your switches or press your buttons first time of asking. But it will invite you back again; it never gives up on the listener, so singular it realises its attraction to be. Do right by it and you’ll find a friend for life, unlikely to abandon you when fashions change.
