onsider Wrapped Islands to be the product of an unlikely-but-fruitful pairing of two of Vienna’s more superficially disparate parties – the arch-academics of Polwechsel and Beach-Boys-glitch champion Christian Fennesz. For the past decade, Polwechsel has been responsible for some of the most uncompromising chamber works to be found, microscopic fields of electronics-tinged scratch and scrape rooted in the ego-defying tradition of late-20th century composition. By contrast, Fennesz has spent a career crafting an idiosyncratic brand of digital art merging his devotion to lush 1960s pop with the sputter and hum of the Touch and Mego aesthetic. Fennesz’s improvised extracurricular work, however, that reveals him to be a sensitive and flexible sparring partner as well as an adept composer. His grainy melodicism is an integral component of the massive MIMEO ensemble, the playful pileups of the Fenn O’Berg trio, and his occasional appearances with Polwechsel’s own Werner Dafeldecker. Even with this personal connection, there’s still a formidable stylistic gap to be bridged, and the success of Wrapped Islands hinges on the rapid adaptability of its creators.


Wrapped Islands finds Polwechsel on their first all-improvised outing, and their freedom from composition rigor leaves them uncommonly receptive to the sun-warmed atmospheres of Fennesz. The soundfield –bubbling streams of modulated strings, growling bass rumbles, fluttering saxophone multiphonics – is largely Polwechsel’s, but the tone found here owes more to the pixilated beaches of Endless Summer than the lunar landscapes of Polwechsel’s earlier releases. While Wrapped Islands may jettison the overt melody of Fennesz’s last solo effort in favor of more abstract fare, it retains that album’s contrast between the apparent placidity of the surface structures and the more unsettling currents that run beneath. Warms surges of suspended string tones wrap around barbed guitar harmonics and fidgety electronics, calling to mind the playfully tense interlocking of the hermetic and organic seen in Christo’s environmental art, to which the album’s title presumably makes reference.


Beginning with a trickle of electronics and swelling to a rich stream of bass buzz and feedback hum, “Framing 1” immediately sets the terms for the compromise between Polwechsel’s icy prickle and Fennesz’s warmer currents. Surrounded by Fennesz’s sparkling laptop gurgles, guitarist Burkhard Stangl trades in his typically distant clusters for jazzier meanderings and offers up a series of bent flutters before slipping beneath the swelling tide from Werner Dafeldecker’s bass and Michael Moser’s cello. An omnipresent drone is passed from player to player, establishing a tranquil surface across which round-edged tones leisurely bob and sharper intrusions send quickly stilled ripples of distress. “Framing 3” recasts the opener on a stormier sea, with Dafeldecker establishing a menacing undertow of electronically thickened arco bass echoed by Fennesz’s eerily resonant electronics and punctuated by John Butcher’s wavering saxophone. On later tracks, like the elegant “Framing 6,” Fennesz balances his laptop interjections with fragile acoustic guitar plucking, and he and Stangl’s chimes circle like evening fireflies above a cooling pool of glassy bowing and soft pizzicato. Fennesz’s playing remains delicate and sensitive throughout, and he folds naturally into the well-established group sound of the Polwechsel crew – even as they continually assimilate his warmly abrasive textures and unhurried pacing.


Other tracks feature Fennesz in a slightly more active vein, and his refracted guitar samples and granular gurgles offer further buoyancy to the lush group sound. “Framing 2” centers on a duet between Stangl’s electric guitar and Fennesz’s approximation of its digitally dissolving mirror image, while Dafeldecker and Butcher create shifting backdrops of fractal walking bass and amplified tenor saxophone feedback. On “Framing 7,” the laptopper’s trademark pitchshifted guitar glimmers draw Dafeldecker and Moser into an exchange of uncharacteristically rich bowed drones and fragile harmonics. “Framing 8,” the album’s impeccable postscript, edges closest to the pop-tinged atmospheres of Fennesz’s recent solo efforts. Lazy slide guitars spin out crystalline melodies above a net of splintery electronics that ripples sympathetically with each passing note – it’s difficult not to imagine Fahey channeling his spectral blues on the imagined islands of Endless Summer .


Improvised music rarely yields results as immediately inviting as the tropical soundscapes found on Wrapped Islands . Yet despite its accessibility, Wrapped Islands never trades its depth of sonic detail or dulls its sharper edges for the sake of superficial beauty. What emerges is a musical world anchored in both Polwechsel’s brittle fragmentation and Fennesz’s sentimental flickers – one needs not look further than Friederike Paetzold’s color-saturated collage of aerial island photographs and mitosis stills for the appropriate visual corollary. Together, Polwechsel and Fennesz have co-created a brilliant alien beachscape whose warm sands hide slivers of broken glass, an intriguing inner world that demands equal parts admiration and attention from those who visit.