In assessing their shared multimedia performance at Seattle's 2012 edition of Decibel Festival, label maven and photographer Jon Wozencroft said of their collaborative project, "Liquid Music was made in 2001, in conjunction with the music Christian Fennesz was developing during that fertile period when the future was still a good idea. The first version was premiered during the Touch tour of 2001, the time of Fennesz's "Endless Summer" and the steady movement towards "Venice". The footage for Liquid Music originates from Prague, Paxos, Crete, Cephalonia, Messinia, London and one short clip from Monterey Bay. It was filmed on H-8 and mini-DV between 1995 and 2001. The main idea was to film everything through the lens, with no post production other than the compilation of many years work into a coherent whole. Fennesz's music, and its ascendent quality, made that a pleasure. The optical quality is on the cusp between analogue and digital resolution. In many respects it‚ "an exchange of values as much as working methods." This approach, to a music which eschews closely to a shared visual aesthetic and themes, not only described this particular work between Fennesz and the label, but his larger discography including the recently released "Agora" and a new forthcoming work for the Touch label.
This most recent album by the artist continues in his trademark textural warmth and embracing immersion of his washes of soft distortion and undulating, lapping waves of processed guitar, while contributing a number of new components to the mix. At times risking spilling into soundtrack-like material, these suggestive ques are instead reigned in by a recent development into a more restrained minimalism, which is also represented in the extended track durations. Fennesz came to notice as one of the first of what was coined 'laptop guitarists', alongside fellow electro-acoustic artists like Oren Ambarchi, Keith Rowe, Richard Skelton, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Rosy Parlane, Rafael Toral and Sebastien Roux. Where Christian Fennesz stood out in this shared company of music utilizing the raw material generated by the electric guitar, and heavily processed and composed on portable computers, was in the visual and thematic cohesion of his releases. The first of the major thematic works, and one that caused ripples in the minimal electronic music world of the early 2000s, was the Pacific Ocean and ceaseless sunsets of the Brian Wilson-inspired musical horizons of "Endless Summer", for the Mego label. A string of releases followed, and a shift to his new home on Touch, including "Black Sea", and the sublime "Cendre", a collaborative work with Ryuichi Sakamoto. This prolific period was covered in an extensive interview and cover story, "Fennesz: A Song for Europe", in which The Wire's Rob Young rendezvous with Vienna's laptop maestro and found an artist immersed in the beauty of disintegration. North American audiences will be similarly immersed this spring, when New York electronic artist Britton Powell joins Christian Fennesz for an extensive series of dates across the country, including a night in Seattle at The Columbia City Theater.
