Viennese sound artist-guitarist Christian Fennesz worked on Mosaic in a ‘9 to 5’ routine in his new Seven Fountains studio space in Vienna but with no immediate concept. He got up early in the morning, worked until midday, took a break, and worked again until evening. Ideas morphed into experimental, improvised themes, sculpted and gravitated into layered compositions, and were tightened and corrected during the mixing process.

The title reflects this intense, working process of putting an element into place one at a time, just like ancient art that takes its time to build a full picture. The cover photo by Jon Wozencroft intensifies this reflective dimension and references the cover artwork of the masterful Venice (Touch, 2004 and 2024), but the division between the land, the horizon, and the deep blue sea is more extreme.

Mosaic follows the last studio album, Agora, which was released five years ago. Fennesz completed the work on Mosaic between January and May 2024. It is a most beautiful, highly immersive, dream-like listening experience. It suggests a nuanced but symphonic web of cinematic-kaleidoscopic sounds – including subtle, seductive noises, and colors, openly emotional but in an understated manner, and orchestrated in an enigmatic, left-off-center way.

Fennesz experiments with subtle, unusual time signatures and borrows ideas from surprising sources. «Love and the Framed Insects» surfs on an elusive, atmospheric 7/4 pulse. «Personare» transforms West African pop music from the 1980s into Fennesz’s idiosyncratic sonic universe. The closing piece «Goniorizon» was based on six hard rock guitar riffs mixed on top of one another, mutated into a resonant, spiraling drone.

Eyal Hareuveni

Fennesz (keyboards, electronics, guitars)