If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then, uh, making similes about music writing must be like griping about the time travel paradox. To step out of this unthinkable quangle I propose replacing the word “about” with the word “to” and try writing to music. Electronic/Ambient is difficult to write about without sounding blousy or boring everyone’s socks off, but it makes a nice textural canvas to creatively roam all over.

On its release, Fennesz’s Venice had reviewers cosmetically eulogizing its wondrous casuistry, but to what meaningful end? I’m curious to know why it’s called “Venice.” Is this mere pronunciation play? By switching the alveolar central voiceless fricative f to a voiced v, and conversely turning the labio-dental voiced fricative z into a voiceless c, the name ‘Fennesz’ becomes ‘Venice.’ Amazing stuff, because in doing so Christian Fennesz has suggested a new label for this kind of music—veneers. Veneers music is a deceptive, superficial show; a façade where nothing is as it seems. Taking that as my cue, I’m going to play three pieces of veneers on repeat and improvise to them.

Marsen Jules - De La Mort D’un Cygne

We’re ambling down a cobblestone street all buffeted and frozen in the huffed up wind. The tinkling of fifty copper chimes interferes with our sense of spheres. Lucky we’re not agoraphobic because the last wisps of cloud in the infinite chill-blue sky are being swept away by a distant polar wind, which swoops down straight into, and through, the burning maples forested across the foothills of a circling alpine range. A hundred million fragile leaves shiver and fall from their stems while several craggy mountains sit around in stony contemplation stroking their Father Time beards. A demon flying machine passed through here recently, its vast slipstream still roaring through the valleys hollowed out by ancient glaciers.

We have a sketchy awareness of our surroundings. A wide plateau opens up to expose bits of a mediaeval village being painted into its centre. From their rooftop chimneys faint puffs of smoke get dabbed in. The local priest leans out of a window bellowing at God to halt the blasphemy of modern science but his voice is lost to the drama of the elements. There he is in his robe, the tiniest thing. You lean into the wind and call out to him, why are you here? But the painting is never finished and your question goes unanswered. One more step takes us into a colorless unconceived zone. We are falling off the edge of the world.

Eluvium - Everything to Come

Consciousness ebbed in. I woke up cold with fear inside a sack of semi-blackness thinking oh no not again. My body felt weak as I lay there for a minute. A ruminating vibration being transferred from something beneath me ran through my bones. My head was swimming. I pushed and pulled. It took forever but eventually the sack lining ripped and I crawled through, out onto damp concrete. Two blue parallel streaks of light cut through the dark and I realized I was deep underground standing on the subway. I could hear the wail of distant wheels and panicked, turned forward, turned back, which way to run? The wail was coming through the walls like a siren, but remained steady, almost rhythmical.

I checked myself. Where the hell am I? Is this the Oedo line? I wandered along the track and with each step the alien tones filled my ears with a calming assurance, my fear slowly subsiding. Ungk. Consciousness ebbs in. Someone shines a torch into my eyes, my head thumps down onto a desk. I’m in a small room. There seem to be three monks holding Tibetan bowls in their hands. One of the monks looks at me and says “Murakami wants you for the part, you’re perfect”. I’ve been written into this guy’s novel about eerie unseen forces. Every time a reader turns to page 80 I wake up cold with fear inside a sack of semi-blackness. A ruminating vibration runs through my bones. My head is swimming.

Fennesz - Rivers of Sand

You’re out on the ocean listening to the waves intermingling and roaming across their endless sonic plateau and you go under. You go down, down beneath the waves and the muted noises around becomes a viscosity full of cause and effect. Low tones ebb in and out of reach while all the sonic mysteries of the deep play pointillist echo around these underwater canyons of rock. There are faint electrostatics burps of neon light zipping in at you from afar, the spotlight of a boat above zaps down cutting an arc through the ocean, is shattered and all the pieces of light flit back together, are refracted and drawn in to their source sending your vision away into the blasé grey.

The glitzy miniscule white lights slipping in toward you from a few hundred metres away change to a faint glow of pink and they seem to be attached to tiny creatures sparkling with amazement at your presence. It’s so dark down here now. An oil tanker suddenly enters your domain, a large black shadow cuts through the dark and the pink blitz around you scatters off, is absorbed by the roar of the tanker’s turbines. These images all come to you in a dream, which you wake up to in a kind of ion-sweat and remember that last night you had downloaded the new Sony-Cousteau neuro-modulater for Alpha San switch-master. You are in recharge mode now. The tiny chips in your microcircuitry are whirring. Their deglitching routines are running, checking and rechecking your BrainGate for signs of pretension.

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