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This was my first foray into Christian Fennesz’s music, and it’s probably still my favorite of his. The electronic and glitchy tones contrasted with the natural guitar tones, the moody melodies, the structural strangeness–it was all very new to me. I enjoy the opener quite a bit, with its noise build-up and soft synth pads leading into a downtempo acoustic guitar chord structure, the melody contrasting the earlier segment quite a lot, resolving the chaos with a serene and emotive plucking and with synth textures hiding in the background. When they come out, trading the acoustic guitar for a wash of noise, the contrasts increase and it resolves in such a curious way, leading into the rest of the album as opposed to finalizing anything–the haze of noise and glitched guitar building up to its close. I don’t often hear such compelling music as the opener here…

Fennesz continues his sonic exploration for the rest of the album, contrasting between acoustic guitar and electronic glitching to great effect as with Grey Scale, its soft acoustic plucking, sad, yet with a tinge of hopefulness. This is directly contrasting the next track Glide, which builds over nine and a half minutes from an ambiguous “underwater” tapping and noise-drone into a noisy, glitchy crescendo of melancholic and cathartic synth-fuzz guitar tones. I very much enjoy the contrasts Fennesz uses here, it’s especially powerful to go from moody ambiguity to cathartic noise, or vice versa. The tambre and tones he uses on this album are melancholic on their own, with a hushed yet percussive performance, loud at times and soft others, it’s a lovely work of atmospheric mood-setting and one of my favorites.

Black Sea is available officially on bandcamp