Endless Summer

Endless Summer is titled in reference to the Beach Boys, though the music it contains draws less from the orchestral pop sensibility of Pet Sounds than it does Brian Wilson’s emotional openness and musical intricacy. Traces of pop music run through Endless Summer, though they are usually obscured either by fractural electronics, as on “Made In Hong Kong,” or huge sheets of ambient noise, as on “”A Year In A Minute” and “Got to Move On.” In “Caecilia,” formless sheets of sound slowly coalesce into fragile, heartfelt melodies. The album is a dialogue between the guitar playing that is at the heart of most of these compositions and the layers of ambient noise that surround it. These elements become so integrated over the course of the album that it becomes impossible to differentiate between the organic and the treated, and on “Shisheido,” the guitar and electronics fuse completely to create a whole new sonic color. Like Brian Wilson before him, Fennesz has created a musical work intensely intimate and fathomlessly far-reaching.