Polwechsel & Fennesz - Wrapped Islands
(Erstwhile)
Leave it to Erstwhile's visionary Jon Abbey to facilitate an encounter between Polwechsel and Christian Fennesz. Polwechsel being the austere contemporary composition quartet led by Werner Dafeldecker, and Fennesz a universally embraced envoy for a mistier stripe of laptop humanism, all these two forces appear to have in common would be a home base in Vienna. Where Fennesz would have you wallow with him in surf's-up nostalgia, Polwechsel prefers the fusty, dusty domain of academic papers and aesthetic treatises. Wrapped Islands not only finds common ground for this oddly matched pairing, but finds it in a South
Pacific setting conceptually linked to Christo's outrageous art feat of the early '80s.
In all fairness, Fennesz has proven himself an uncommonly versatile player, slipping comfortably between his celebrated solo projects, the lighthearted Fenno'berg, heady sound/art interfaces, and dates with the daunting Music in Movement Electronic Orchestra (MIMEO). Polwechsel, however, bends its rigid agenda in several notable ways. Firstly, the music assembled as Wrapped Islands was improvised, not composed, during a three-day recording session at Christoph Amann's Vienna studio. And while the instrumental voices of Dafeldecker's double bass, John Butcher's various saxophones, Michael Moser's cello, and Burkhard Stangl's electric and acoustic guitars draw from a familiar palette, augmented as usual with electro-acoustic accents (all but Butcher shape and supplement their sounds with a computer or electronic devices), Fennesz's presence is immediately apparent. Though he avoids the blatant sunniness of Endless Summer, perhaps in deference to Dafeldecker's dictum of ego less performance, Fennesz maintains a tone warm and insinuating enough to thaw Polwechsel's icy formality. Friederike Paetzold's fantastic art design revels in the difference, incorporating wrapped islands, "Solaris" still frames, modular furniture and mitosis imagery, and a trippy spectrum of psychedelic pastels that breaks completely with the stark aesthetic of Polwechsel past.
No Polwechsel record has ever sounded so humid, so lush. In the opening "Framing 1," the pervasive electro-acoustic haze melts Stangl's six-string icicles, and the mingled low-register sounds swell as they drink in the moisture. The call-and-response between Butcher's brass and the other musicians shape-shifts to hint at myriad fowl and fauna flitting heard-but-unseen through dense foliage. The complementary guitar textures of Fennesz's digitally smeared strums and Stangl's crystalline plucks sustain this vivid rainforest impressionism throughout much of the album, though all five musicians are inventive enough in their choices of devices and unpredictable gestures that each "Framing" emerges as distinct experience. On "Framing 4," for example, the guitars recede as Dafeldecker and Moser stage a slinky pas de deux against a vespertine backdrop of chirps and clicks. Roscid, roiling atmospherics return with "Framing 5," now setting a series of exquisite Stangl semi-solos in bedewed contrast to the quiet bustle. Moser takes a memorable turn in "Framing 7," sawing more sensuously than Polwechsel ever allowed. The closing "Framing 8" is so lovely and fleeting, it could actually be mistaken for a John Fahey guitar-and-tape piece.
Butcher, Dafeldecker, Moser, and Stangl are exceptional players and, liberated by the casual, improvised context of Wrapped Islands, they've rarely if ever sounded finer. The talented, benevolent Fennesz once again proves himself an ideal partner. No one else could have truly bonded with these intimidating musicians, broken through their defenses, and brought out the bonhomie often obscured in Polwechsel's sparse and brittle scores.
|
