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Fennesz/Sakamoto, "Sala Santa Cecilia"
Touch Tone
A live recording from late last year, this disc is an appetizer for theupcoming collaborative full length between two of the biggest names inelectronic music. Sala Santa Ceciliais one 19-minute laptop duet that will not appear on the future fulllength; however the track is described on the sleeve as an "overture,"so there's the chance that the eventual record could contain elementsherein, though it could just mean an overture for the show itself. Itdoesn't come as much of a surprise that these two would start workingtogether as they both, even as major personalities in the electronicworld, remain attached to acoustic instrumentation, as well as bothstraddling the vague terrain between high ('chin-scratch') experimentaland adult ('couch + cocktail') contemporary musics. I loved Sakamoto'stwo collaborations with Alva Noto (Vrioon I & II) and both of Fennesz's laptop improv trios with Fenn O'Berg,plus Touch is marketing this as if it were "the next level" ofmusic-making as we know it, so expectations were a little high, and thedisc lives up to some of them. The most impressive thing about it isthe amount of different sound elements packed into such a short timewhile achieving a fairly level flow (the fairly level flow is the mostunimpressive thing about it). If the set was improvised, it shows offthe sympathetic nature of each musician to the sound palette of theother as everything locks together so well that even if Touch said itwas improvised I would not believe them. The movement of the trackbenefits from Fennesz's recent retreat from the saturatingly obviousguitar riff and his new love of Vangelis-sized retro synth drones.Sakamoto is on point with some washed-out orchestral snips of his own,and Fennesz counters with some of the same dreamy lateral static cutsthat appear on everything of his except Hotel Parallel. Theopening of the piece is not so impressive, a call-and-response ofmonochrome tones, high-pitched and a little too church-y for my taste,oscillating in a commonplace glitch pattern. At about four minutes, arhythmic pulse ushers in the first meat of the track: bunches of thoseold-style drones, orchestral loops, some digital rain, and obliteratedpiano plunks. Someone goes crazy with the backward orchestra loops alittle too early and muddies the water, but at around nine minuteseverything bottoms out, leaving a beautifully suggestive rhythm ofdigital slices, the likes of which I've not heard from either artist,and around which earth-toned pools of Fennesz heroin start collecting,nice and slow, across the last six minutes. Where on a Fennesz recordthis kind of oceanic nostalgia would be enough, this time someonepeppers it, eggs it on with a mess of sharp and shimmering glitchliquid that really gets out there. The key to enjoying this is gettingtuned to the small changes; after repeated listens, I actually wishcertain sections would be allowed more repetition, more room forsmaller variation. That this is billed as an "overture" helps me topredict that the album will be rightfully more expansive.
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