It's winter. You're in a strange place to do some work and you find yourself in the middle of a blizzard. There are resources nearby but the traffic has completely stopped. The place is drafty. TV isn't doing it for you anymore. You want the mental picture? This is your album.

Christian Fennesz has been making aural ice storms for years now. Sometimes they're more like aural underwater adventures, as is the case with the 2001 glitch-fest Endless Summer. As its title indicates, Black Sea is a lot more somber than that album. But Fennesz only grows more adept at taking what sound like sonic accidents and arranging them in the most deliberate of manners. He's not a tunesmith by any means — tone and placement are his weapons of choice. But when a snatch of melody appears, as when an acoustic guitar sprinkles up a quarter of the way through the ten-minute title track, its timing couldn't be better.

Granted, to a degree that's because Fennesz's sound beds are so meditative they can lull you into a trance. Still, that trance is often a rewarding one, especially at the end, with the swirling stringed instruments and submerged synth washes. Even the… read more »