Fennesz/Daniell/Buck

“Knoxville”

(Thrill Jockey)

Christian Fennesz - Guitar, electronics
David Daniell - Guitar
Tony Buck - Drums

I think it’s fair to assume that many listeners will be alerted to this recording by the presence of Austrian guitar-processing whiz Christian Fennesz. Here he is called upon to improvise, the prospect of which which brought to mind a concert I attended, in 2008, at London’s Museum of Garden History. That night, for the second of the Touch label’s annual “Atmospheres” festivals, pianist Charles Matthews played a short but captivating sequence of compositions by Takemitsu, Ligeti and Feldman. Any one of those performances positively invited an ancillary improvisation from Fennesz, the festival’s headline act. When Fennesz did sit in at the end of Matthews set, however, after a promising start, Matthews latched onto a brief upsurge of processed noise from Fennesz and launched into a dazzling improvisation of such agility and melodic conviction that Fennesz was left all at sea. He stood back for a while, obviously at a loss as to how to contribute, before retreating from the stage, with Matthews still in full flight. I mention this merely to make the point that the constraints imposed upon Fennesz by his instrumentation severely limit his ability to improvise. Of course, as the record attests, he has contributed to some superb improvisations over the years. These include works with Jim O’Rourke and Peter Rehberg as Fenn O’Berg, a series of live dates in the formidable company of guitarist Keith Rowe, and as a guest on Polwechsel’s 2002 album “Wrapped Islands”, all of which set him in contexts far more sympathetic to his established style, that shimmering haze of distortion and nostalgic reverie that was set in amber by the huge popular success of his 2001 solo album, “Endless Summer”. A more recent surprise was his appearance as a guest on an ECM album this year, Food’s “Quiet Inlet”(reviewed by Ian Mann elsewhere on this site).

“Knoxville”, which was recorded live at the Big Ears festival in Knoxville, USA, in 2009, though it casts him in yet another new context, is more in keeping with Fennesz’ solo projects. His companions for the date, at the behest of the festival’s organisers, were fellow guitarist David Daniell and drummer Tony Buck. David Daniell is new to me, though he has released albums both under his own name and with experimental guitar/bass/drums trio San Agustin. In duo with Doug McCombs of Tortoise he also recently recorded a duet album, “Sycamore”, also for Thrill Jockey. Tony Buck, as drummer with The Necks besides various other excursions into left-field contemporary jazz, probably needs no introduction to Jazz Mann readers. The three seem well matched. San Agustin’s music is spare and elemental, cleaving closely to the fundamentals of rock music but venturing into mood-scaping ambience, and though the Necks generally have a freer rhythmic sensibility, both bands share an aversion to excess that chimes well with the Fennesz brand of wintry abstraction.

As the opening “Unuberwindbare Wande” immediately makes explicit, none of the participants will dominate this set. Fennesz’s contribution is the most difficult to pin down, though certainly that dense, stormy underlay of surge and rumble, ultimately dying away to a static smog enmeshed with Buck’s metal-on metal shimmer for the transition to “Heat From Light”, could only be his. If Daniell’s resounding, sustained and reverbed riffs on the former track add a touch of post-rock Americana, his work on the latter burrows deeper into the group sound, which slowly gathers and swells with some intensity. Buck’s deep bass drum kicks create a strong undertow as cymbal splashes fleck the crest of each forward surge. “Antonia” maintains the same group interplay, though the tide is now receding ahead of the aptly titled “Diamond Mind”, which plays the set out as a distorted reflection and recapitulation of what has gone before. The track becomes more abstract even as it gains in intensity, though ultimately each instrumental line gains clarity as conventional drum patterns and guitar feedback emerge amid a collective surge to crescendo.

The four named tracks are really passages of a continuous set that only makes sense as a unity, which is all over in just over half an hour. That’s just about enough time to draw you in, put you through the wringer, and leave you in an altered state of mind. The dual guitars combine very effectively to engulf the listener like heavy weather, while Buck’s percussion adds complementary details that linger in the mind, evoking light refracted through rain or flocks of birds wheeling against the fading light.

I confess that it took a few plays for me to connect with “Knoxville”; initially I was perfectly underwhelmed. There are now so many extant recordings of a similar, though not identical nature that probably no-one really needs any more of it. Certainly for Fennesz fans, however, this will be well worth a listen, as it’s quite distinct from the other entries in his discography. The limitations that hamstrung the 2008 Fennesz/Matthews collaboration are irrelevant here, and although Fennesz’ characteristic sound is the least readily distinguishable of the contributors, that’s actually much to his credit as it demonstrates a laudable selflessness. Similarly, anyone who has previously connected with Daniell’s work will find in this this session a worthwhile and convincing adjunct to it, while it may well be fans of the Necks, drawn to the recording by Buck’s presence, who will have to open their minds the widest to embrace it.

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