Fennesz

The secret to Austrian glitch and computer-music innovator Christian Fennesz’s appeal outside of the hermetic universe of avant-garde electronic music is his penchant for melodic and harmonic beauty. His formative noise and avant-garde experiments of the early '90s found him degenerating unlikely source material beyond recognizability, whether it was sounds from his central instrument—the electric guitar—or Rolling Stones and Beach Boys tracks on his infamous 1998 7-inch record Plays. Eventually, Fennesz began to integrate generative software that has now become ubiquitous, like Max/MSP and SuperCollider, into his compositional process, with 1997’s Hotel Paral.lel representing his first significant foray into this territory. In 2001, he cemented his auteur status with the widely acclaimed Endless Summer, in which balmy guitar chords and samples peek through rippling sheens of noise. Fennesz’s collaborations with avant-pop artists like David Sylvian and Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous, as well as other composers, have led new fans to his music. Among these releases, his muted and gorgeous duo album with Ryuichi Sakamoto—2007's Cendre—remains one of the most inviting entries in his discography.