do you think FENNESZ famous?
 

i m not sure, but everytime he have a new album i tried to get it asap. but i sold Venice after a few spins. and the concert i went to was nothing compare to his album. but there are always huge audiences.

he's probably probably had the most success from the anyone on either touch or mego, and probably the most attention of any non-dance electronic artist to come to light in the last 10 years.

never seen Fennesz live and i'm not inclined to either.
However i absolutely LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE his records and his general aesthetics. This guy is more or less a pioneer in his own right. I find his music so soothing and inspiring. I don't think he has invented anything per se, but he helped making improvized music more popular , especially through Touch and Mego, which is already a great step forward.
Superb body of work.

He did some stuff, maybe not an entire album, which could be considered groundbreaking. More than famous, I think of him as 'established'. He ,might not have the biggest audience in the world, but a reasonable amount of people buy his records when they come out.

also, endless summer kind of crossed over from the realm of Wire readers, to the realm of Uncut readers

^^ yes
actually, correcting myself here; improvized music is not what he does, it's more like shoegaze ambient .
the Fennoberg stuff is more improvized. But i'm guessing that Endless Summer was hardly improvised at all, so my bad.

He's put out improv stuff on Erstwhile, but that stuff doesn't get coverage outside the realms of the Wire, yet.

For example, this:
http://www.erstwhilerecords.com/catalog/046.html

oh yeah of course
well i've never heard of this precise one. Is this good?
yeah well i have a bunch of improvized stuff by him which is just not as good as his regular stuff.
I think we're talking about his regulat TOUCH /MEGO releases here.

or not
oh yeah the question sis is he famous?
well relatively yes but for his regular output.

that one is good, it's not much like a Fennesz record, more of a Keith Rowe record.

YES we are taking about the regular TOUCH/MEGO output. his improvised part are a bit loose.

is it true that his is the best selling out of TOUCH/MEGO?

^^^oh i'd imagine so, for sure.
the Jim O' stuff on mego '1,2,3" may have sold a bunch also after he got involved in SY + the Domino Lps, but i think the Fennesz sales are the most consistent.
The effort from TOUCH to promote fennesz'stuff is way more important than for any other of their releases.
Pitchdork and Wire are way into his tsuff so they'll rebound on this and make it buzz on the mighty interwbzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Yes, it's true. Pretty much every major music magazine reviewed it, not a treatment his other records get.

I'm just assuming that it is, but i can't imagine anyone else on those labels really selling much more than him

I dn't know. Let's ask the next everyday Joe that stops at this stopsign...

hey! Hey you! Excuse me, sir. Do you know who Fennesz is?

what the fuck?

Stupid.

thanks.

He's on a nine inch nails remix album. That's pretty famous considering it's at Wal-Mart and shit and has probably sold a million copies. Generally speaking of course.. he'll never be FAMOUS, but certainly he's probably as famous as that kind of music could be. Which is great. I love his music. Lots of people know and love it. I dunno. He's famous, sure. It's somewhat perplexing considering what he's doing but that's great.

......However, I'm more perplexed by the popularity of Ryoji Ikeda -- another artist who I love, but his music is just sine waves and tones, and the dude gets TONS of publicity, he's really well-known and shit. Which is great, "Test Patterns" is one of my favorites of the year and "Dataplex" is one of my favorite albums EVER.... but yeah it's pretty, uh, "challenging"/"difficult" stuff for most people really so his success kinda surprises me.

never heard of him

Bahahaha.

who knew this cocksmear remixed shitty NIN songs?

Rob, I'm pretty sure silliness isn't tollerated here.

Leave it Noise redux. Yr post was great. Keep the silliness alive.

haha thanks

fez-nesz, hahahahaha.

but seriously, fennesz is absolutely mesmerizing live, one of the best shows of that type of music i've ever attended. completely beautiful.

still not in any way FAMOUS

not by a long chance.

I think Ryoji Ikeda gets a lot of coverage for being very cold in his concepts while not being shit in his results. The two records I have of his (+- & Test Patterns) are build on 'concepts', which immediately gets him in with the 'high art' crowd (that is, people who go to galleries and the Barbican), it gets him in with the sound-art crowd, he's in with the Wire crowd, the ambient crowd, the IDM crowd... they're all variations on the same chin-stroker, but it's a fairly broad cross-section.

I've never really got Fennesz. It's ok, but never excited me (not that much 'electronica' does, in all honesty). I'd rather have Philip Jeck. Mmm. Jeck.

I'm pretty sure Rehberg said that Fennesz was Mego's biggest-selling artist in a relatively recent Wire article.

I'm going to use "variations on the same chin-stroker" as a song title now.

I've never seen him live, but I sure do like some of his records.

Interestingly enough, I saw Ryoji Ikeda at the Barbican, I went just to be sociable but the reason my friends wanted to go was because their art tutor had recommended it to them. It was an absolute bag of shite, and quite different to what i'd heard of his prior to that (+-), it was like a shit merzbow with a preachy film playing behind that was a message to the audience that they shouldn't support war and stuff.
There's a lesson to be learned here, and the lesson is that art tutors are mostly idiots who should be ignored.

The last LP Black Sea is significantly less good than any other Fennesz record. It's way to quiet and subdued, although still a nice listening experience.

Sigh... The dreaded "art crowd".

My friend goes to art school and his teacher always plays sun city girls in class.

Not that I think Fennesz has much or anything in common with Jeck. I just wanted to point out that I saw our favourite scruffy dansette record player puppeteer 3 times and he almost made me weep.

This isn't at all a question about Fennesz, but really a question about what "famous" means.

Like, "is this guy who sells albums in the tens of thousands and is on the cover of magazines that pander to obscure music fans and that 95% of the people on this board know of plus 77% like by any definition famous?"

Go ask Andy Warhol. Or better still, ask Valerie Solanas.

That's what I was thinking too. I always considered Bjork "famous", but I remember in like 2003 I was working at this cafe with a bunch of high schoolers, and I was like "oh I'm going to see Bjork this weekend" and they were all like "WHO?" So famaous? No? I don't know.

bjork is certainly famous in the UK

I would say Bjork is well-known, bt she could walk down the street in most any city in america and people are not going to botehr her, just some hipsters.

and for Fez(Fennesz), that fuck could walk around with a big sign pointing to him that reads "techno beats for cheap" and no one would give a fuck.

Techno Beats For Cheap! Here!

Rob, as an experiment It'd be awesome if YOU did that, and if anyone asked you about the sign just be like "I'm Fennesz" and then record their response.