Pitchfork

This piano/electronics duo is an arrangement Ryuichi Sakamoto has been recently exploring in concert, with ultra-minimalist Alva Noto among others, so it seems a natural for his second collaboration with Christian Fennesz. Listening to Cendre after returning again to Sala Saint Cecilia, their EP from 2005, affirms that the two records couldn't be more different. The latter was a single live 19-minute track that found Sakamoto inhabiting the abstract digitalia we've come to associate with Fennesz, directing his diverse talent toward epic computer-based composition. Cendre feels like a meeting of equals occurring precisely halfway between the two.

The obvious precursors here are the two albums composer Harold Budd made with producer Brian Eno. Like Ambient 2/Plateaux of Mirror and The Pearl, Cendre consists of one person playing delicate pieces on an acoustic piano while another fills the ample spaces with electronic treatments. Eno's contributions to the Budd records were sometimes so subtle you weren't sure he was doing anything beyond giving the reverb slider an occasional bump. Fennesz' omnipresent drones and crackly beds of sound, on the other hand, are central here, providing a virtual room for Sakamoto's piano and regularly shifting the tone of the pieces by several shades in a given direction. Fennesz also plays and processes guitar, and he and Sakamoto both are credited with "laptop."

There's an intriguing openness to this music, a sense of suggestion that nonetheless refuses to favor any particular mood. Fennesz and Sakamoto seem to be constantly searching for those in-between spaces, where serenity is infused with a sense of uneasiness and hope is laced with dread. The music's emotional cast can move in any of several directions depending on what the listener brings to it. Because of this atmospheric flexibility, Cendre as a whole is at first difficult to get a handle on, and single-word song titles like "Trace" and "Mono" provide few clues.

Sometimes the musicians seem to be pushing against each other, as on "Aware". Here Sakamoto's right hand plays a soft melody while the disconcerting electronics stew and churn, a veritable cauldron of trouble and unease. "Glow" derives its energy from the contrast between the measured piano lines and the unpredictable surges of feedback and bits of cut-up guitar, which emerge like random flutters of sound bouncing against some Chopin nocturne. Elsewhere, the two composers seem to be working in concert toward a single goal, as with the title track, which is mostly electronic drone with bits of a garbled transmission and just a foreboding bass note or two from the piano.

Ever since having my guts torn out by an encounter with Satie's Gymnopédies many years ago, a certain kind of piano makes me a little suspicious. From watching films, we're so used to hearing spare keyboard melodies propping up melodrama, it can seem too easy to rig an effect, so I've always got an ear out for something that feels manipulative. This music, which is most interesting when the record is heard at its full length, seems to come from a different place. With its even mood and patiently unfolding tracks, Cendre leaves a lot of time and space for contemplation, and there is the sense that the listener is expected to do some work to "complete" the music. Cendre seems to be a series of exquisitely phrased questions that we're all to answer as we wish.