Fenn O'Berg, though perhaps not the first Laptop-Thing to bring its particular brand of joy and tension to the stage, were certainly one of the first to carry such tidings beyond venues of a strictly avant-garde bent. They received reactions of a mixed sort: some were intrigued, others less so; in Rome, O'Rourke was apparently handed a guitar and more or less forced to play a standard acoustic set before anyone was allowed to leave.
Their first collective effort still sounds unlimited and unsituated, the precise result of a sound not yet subordinated to those who practice it. Fenn O'Berg's phantasmic excess flits purposefully, yet with a spontaneity of movement, in and out of a fantasy-frame. Sometimes its real and recognizable, its smeared atmospheres pursed with sibilant tones and the sepia glow of a feint harmony, or else it momentarily coheres into a hallucinatory, kaleidoscopic waltz, the sound of flesh shifting and swaying in artificial fabrics. But often trails of complex note-patterns run deep into the air at unreal speed, gnawed at by mutilated tones and blasts of obliterative electronic scree. Either way, the discs control and indeterminacy in the deployment of pop and academics accents results in a radiant work that seduces for the feint possibility that it is entirely imaginary.
The group's second effort, meanwhile, is considerably more mannered. Grainy, rackling impurities are highlighted by evanescent flickering and the sound of Vitrolite-clad ballrooms. Many of the gaps seem closed in, filled out, with the pieces as a result taking on a robust, shadowy figure. A track such as "Riding Again" can thus sound like a symphony for factory hums — the veritable footprints of angels dancing on the head of a pin. Imaginary data still get restored and reorganized with incessant action, though, making this work a fine extension of Fenn O'Berg's basic principles.
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