Additional information
Personnel: Fennesz (guitar, laptop); Ryuichi Sakamoto (piano, laptop); Christian Fennesz (guitar, laptop). Audio Mixers: Christian Fennesz; Fernando Aponte; Ryuichi Sakamoto. Recording information: Amann Studios, Vienna; KA+B Studios, Japan; KA+B Studios, NY. Photographer: Jon Wozencroft. This double disc is a collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto and Christian Fennesz, with the former man taking a decidedly dominant role throughout. The concept behind the album is fairly straightforward: on each night of a 24-date tour, Sakamoto wrote and performed a piano piece in a different key. By tour's end, he'd explored every possible tonal variation within Western notation. He provided these short, jewel-like solo piano melodies to Fennesz, who laid them in soft beds of gently caressing electronics. The results are very pretty...but they're not much more than that. Flumina is a decidedly insubstantial album. Despite the key changes from track to track, the two discs retain a single mood from beginning to end. Each piece feels like it should be playing over the end credits of an indie film about a man who falls in love with a young woman who then dies of a lingering illness. It's hard to convince oneself to listen to this music with focused attention, hard to imagine playing it at top volume; it seems designed to hover in the background, covering the sound of clinking glassware and forks tapping plates and blending smoothly with subdued conversation. All of which is fine. If that's what you're looking for from a two-CD, two-hour set of music, Flumina will meet your needs and then some. ~ Phil Freeman
