Fennesz – Venice 20

Twenty years after it’s first release, a re-issue of Venice with bonus tracks as a limited edition Compact Disc in DVD style case + full colour booklet is released! On page 2 of the booklet shows the written lyrics of Transit by David Sylvian.

Touch Records announced: Twenty years on from its original release, Fennesz’ Venice now returns in the form of a deluxe version remastered by Dennis Blackham. Now with extra tracks not on the previous CD or vinyl versions, we’re once again educing and seduced by this cryochronic time-shatterer of a record. Perhaps best known for its mid-record collaboration with Japan’s David Sylvian, on which the latter artist penned an exclusive set of lyrics on ‘Transit’ – which poke through Fennesz’s trademark crush-static like impassioned pleas for clarity – the record is otherwise no more un-pass-uppable. With the usual mixture of ferric and digital gaze-noise – tarring shoegaze-come-electronica motifs into and evanescent but noisebitten sea-sprays of sound – Fennesz’s meditation on the waterways of Venice betray a latent, superficially contradictory fascination with the mood of anxious contentedness.

On bandcamp.com

The 20th anniversary re-issue of Fennesz’s best-selling ‘Venice’, originally released in 2004, is now available as a deluxe version remastered by Denis Blackham, with new and extra tracks not on the previous CD or vinyl versions. Included in the DVD-format edition is a booklet with texts by Fennesz himself, Denis Blackham & Jon Wozencroft, with unseen photographs from the original 2004 sessions. The booklet also reproduces David Sylvian’s original handwritten lyrics for ‘Transit’. This “stunning collaboration with David Sylvian continues where their fantastic duo track on Sylvian’s album Blemish left off. Situated directly in the middle of a mostly subdued listening experience, ‘Transit’ literally bursts out of the speakers accentuating the album’s more pop-like characteristics as well as its more restrained moments.”

Denis Blackham:

“Fast forward to 2024 and here I am again with the same original master mixes I used in 2003 to make a new and expanded version of the album – Venice 20. A little over twenty years later, technology in audio production, recording and mastering has improved substantially, so I was excited to return to this album and give my 2024  treatment.”

Jon Wozencroft:

“…The whole work has a stillness and a stature that is essentially timeless. This is of course exemplified by the collaboration with David Sylvian on ‘Transit’, which, now 20 years on, has all come true. I hoped the cover art to be on the level of a painting, to endure, like the music. It’s mad because I’d never claim to be able to paint, or assume that photographs can endure as long as paintings can. The work with Christian, which continues, always moves me and above all it’s a chemistry, a feeling you can’t quite put your finger on.”

Christian Fennesz:

“Over months, I collected material for the album: short recordings of acoustic and electric guitars, experiments with newly introduced soft synths and samplers, and field recordings, sometimes done on the go and directly in Venice, where I stayed for several weeks. The sound and acoustics of the city fascinated me. From my room, you could clearly hear conversations at night with the window open, but it was uncertain whether they came from the neighbouring house or several blocks away, as if the sound waves in Venice followed their own rules. It was during this time that the idea for Venice as an album title came to me, as a suggestive description of a dignified decline, decay, death, and rebirth. David Sylvian’s lyrics and vocal performance for ‘Transit’ perfectly encapsulated this idea for me. The piece remains a highlight of a wonderful, ongoing collaboration.” 

Tracklist

1. Rivers of Sand 04:26
2. Chateau Rouge 06:39
3. City of Light 06:34
4. Onsra 00:38
5. Circassian 05:47
6. Onsay 01:05
7. The Other Face 03:20
8. Transit 04:56
9. The Point of It All 05:04
10. Laguna 02:51
11. Asusu 00:54
12. The Stone of Impermanence 06:36
13. Sognato di Domani 05:15
14. Tree 03:20
15. The Future Will Be Different 01:14

Credits

All tracks written, mixed and produced by Christian Fennesz
Mastered by Denis Blackham
Photography & Design: Jon Wozencroft
Published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music (UK) Ltd.