A Fenn O'Berg affair can be intimidating listening. For all the buzzy amniotic bliss of Christian Fennesz' solo recordings, this laptop improv supergroup with cantankerous noisenik Peter Rehberg (a.k.a. Pita, the proprietor of Vienna's Mego label) and the stylistically omnivorous musical polymath Jim O'Rourke is often the opposite of immersive. Their recordings, all live-performance outtakes, are dense, knotty affairs, crosscut with blasts of white noise; the more placid passages are invariably crumpled by digital fists or torn to ragged shreds. Still, more often than not, the music pulls you in.

Magic & Return reissues the trio's two albums so far, 1999's The Magic Sound of Fenn O'Berg and 2002's The Return of Fenn O'Berg, rounding out the set with two previously unreleased cuts, the long, unwinding dronescape "We Will Diffuse You" and the full-on static attack "Adidas Sun Tanned Avant Man." (Pity the track's namesake: given its eviscerating harmonics, the musicians do not hold him in high esteem.) Liner notes tell us that the albums 'material was recorded in places like Paris 'Centre Pompidou, the Viennese jazz club Porgy & Bess and "some old raft floating in Hamburg harbour," but you'd never know it from the music,… read more »