Fennesz Sakamoto

June 13, 2007

Fennesz Sakamoto | Cendre |Touch | Japan

Cendre is a long-distance collaboration between ethereal-noise guitarist/laptop artist Christian Fennesz and electronic pioneer, composer and pop musician Ryuichi Sakamoto. Working from their respective homes in Vienna and New York, they have generated a charmed and haunted third location somewhere in the fiber-optic maze that lies between them.

Fennesz's greatest talent may be creating sounds that destroy the distinction between the digital and the organic--sounds that suggest the listener's own post-modern condition, thus updating and fulfilling Pirandello's Futurist art of noises. Sakamoto, of course, is a legend and still composes with all of his signature lyricism and elegance. The two balance one another: Sakamoto's piano melodies amplify the human core in Fennesz's semi-alienated soundscapes, while being reined in by them. Sakamoto’s piano works have always reflected the influence of Satie and Debussy, but often emote much more directly than those composers’ works. Yet Sakamoto is also a mindful player, at home with the minimal. On Cendre he leaves open spaces for Fennesz's noise to breathe and move, allowing these textures to play on the emotions as well. The result is a meditative collaboration in which figure becomes ground and ground, figure.

In its interplay between the overt and the occluded, Cendre is a recording of greater depth than Fennesz’s acclaimed Endless Summer and greater intrigue than Sakamoto’s lauded solo piano disc BTTB.