sparklehorse + fennesz: in the fishtank 15 (konkurrent)
as an example of how the ‘music biz’ is all kindsof dumbass fucked up monged wrongness, no finer recent example can be found than the recent dangermouse / sparklehorse / david lynch dark night of the soul debacle. combine one shit hot pop producer, one reticent surrealist rock fella, the undisputed king of mainstream avant film weirdness and have a series of much respected musicians sing/perform on it. have david fucking lynch sing on the bugger. guarantee sales and exposure across the board with said deadly combo. then tie it up in all manner of legal nonsense ensuring no-one gets to hear said record. leak onto torrent sites. woo. and hoo. it’s a fine album. worth downloading. worth buying were i allowed to (though lynch’s accompanying book was, briefly). or just stream it on npr.
thankfully this supergroup (heh…) of christian fennesz and mark linkous suffers from no such lawyerly impediments. and instead of dark nights odd-pop we get a sprawling beast at once mechanical and organic, a disorientating mix of linkous’ delicate and disjointed flesh and blood and fennesz’ swelling warm / vicious electronickerry. and it’s testament to an actual proper collaboration (not just fennesz jiggering about with some sparklehorse cast-offs on his laptop) that it’s difficult to pick out who made what noise.
forty minutes of swelling sounds and acoustic abstractions, songs that feel de-re-unconstructed, linkous’ ethereal voice bleeding ghostly in and out of the occassionally disorientating but beautifully melancholic mix. veering between vibrating strings and crackling drone and broken noise and huffing piano and guitar fizz, chiming loops, baffling noise, almost-structured songs. it is occasionally like listening to a badly (goodly) tuned radio.
they have worked together before – live, and fennesz appears on dreamt for light years… – but i’m genuinely amazed how recognisable this is as their work and how well it melds together into one epic whole. and the most peculiar thing is that the two solo six string polaroids sound like they belong to the other person. mark’s guitar piece is all glitchy chimes and static fuzz, a chimera of circuits and acoustics. while christian’s guitar piece is untouched steel and wood, as unrefined as anything he’s recorded. and a fine way to end the record.
sweet jeebus i’m spoiled just now for musical treats…
konkurrent / sparklehorse / fennesz / dark night of the soul
23/10/2009 at 12:34 am
What this bleeding bloke bellows in his review of said 15th release of the “In The Fishtank” series is basically spot-on. Unbeknownst to me this whole Danish record label events by Konkurrent of throwing disparaging, possibly starving music artists into the recording ‘fishtank’ for 48 hours and locking the door dates back to 2002. Galloping under the radar, most of these have gone unnoticed even if they arrived as heavenly gems when pressed on plastic or posted digital downloads.
Lightning strikes as brainchildren Christian Fennesz and Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse) agree to agree diving in the deep end. No still waters ripple between these two. Some super sonic ambient soundscapes that sound like one might imagine are served up. Five tracks together as a duo plus one solo by each artist wrap the end stretching out the creative groove. Take away the the fishtank reference and this could pass for a proper album. That would spoil all the fun though, tainting the terrific results. Sometimes the best intentions exceed the original concept. Lucky for us one was happened onto and executed so deftly.
23/10/2009 at 10:21 am
indeed.
but did you like the record?
didja?
and i don’t bellow. s’all lowercase. so more of a threatening hiss or comely whisper…
23/10/2009 at 12:15 pm
does the originating author know how to take a complement on an excellent album by two outstanding artist? I would hope so and also assume his ability to read between the lines which hint at thinking man’s scribe and higher end of the IQ. but hey I’m only the average, humble listener. what do I know? perhaps a play on words…….
note: this series started back in 1996 not 2002. my error corrected in my additional discovery research.
23/10/2009 at 1:17 pm
thanks for dropping by. the author is much appreciative of yr kind words. not only did he enjoy said complimentary tone but he also dug yr own succinct summary of a fantastic bloody record.
it could indeed stand alone as a proper album outside the collaborative confines of the fishtank. of the series itself i would also recommend the aereogramme/isis & tortoise/bonnie prince billy (especially the springsteen cover) & low/dirty three efforts. very much worth a listen.
yr right though not enough people know about the label or what they do. but oddly enough this record has had a mention or two in press that otherwise wouldn’t know what a fennesz was no matter what to do with the bugger.
p.s. konkurrent is dutch not danish.
23/10/2009 at 5:00 pm
yes I did pick up on my second error – history shows the danish diverting and divesting monetary/trade markets; the dutch – the art and science of water flow especially as it relates to the long revered brew of infamous pils,
ales, and lagers. even in a unified Europe proper distinctions should be noted and ballyhooed.