Endless Summer Nights

Caught a free Fennesz set last night as part of the Moving Patterns Festival at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Manhattan. Bad, cramped room. Mediocre sound system. But the set itself was incredible. Fennesz, alone on stage, hair hanging over his eyes, having his way with a laptop and occasionally sending out sheets of sound from a guitar. A large screen behind him projecting appropriately blurry pictures of moving water and falling rain. Ryuichi Sakamoto was supposed to appear as a "special guest," but he was feeling ill and cancelled at the last moment. Both Fennesz and I were a little under-the-weather as well, and our pre-gig interview turned into an hour of quite enjoyable, spaced-out fever talk.

He made a great comment about how music (like his) that was seen 10 years ago as being discordant and difficult is now being accepted as beautiful, occasionally tame. As an example, he told a story about his mother's reaction to his early work. When he first released the Instrument 12", she didn't like it at all, claimed she could only hear noise. A few years later, when he released the collection Field Recordings 1995-2002, she responded that of the whole album, she only enjoyed the first couple of tracks and wished he would make more music like that. Those tracks, of course, were those found on the original Instrument LP.

Look for the entire interview in the next Grooves.