Fennesz, Schnitt, Gea Brown

Here comes the second edition of International Feel, which last year delivered an excellent selection of electronic and experimental music, with performances by Nurse With Wound, Alva Noto and Austrian artist Fennesz, who has also been considered for the new line-up of the Florence festival.

Alongside the author of “Endless Summer” and the more recent “Aun”, the bill also features two other acts: Gea Brown and Schnitt: what awaits the audience is an evening dominated by mutation, cerebral alteration and a minimalist craftsman of electronic sound.

Amid the deformed, geometric statues of the Museo Marini, between old and new, glass, steel and wood, in an elegantly bare setting, the evening begins relatively early: around 10pm the atmosphere and the space start to close in and focus around Gea Brown's dronic djing.

Here, grainy, minimal sounds slowly build up into a multi-layered, lysergic weave. A web of reverberations that will act as a restless, dreamlike cradle for what will soon reveal itself to be a devastating rhythmic explosion, an all-consuming magnetic implosion that sucks every shape, image and vision into its centre.

This is the set by Schnitt, a project born in 2007 at the hands of Amelie Duchow and Marco Monfardini, devoted to a nuclearisation of standard forms through massive doses of IDM, techno and post-industrial influences, in a new body made of endless interweavings. It's an experience that unfolds as a complete audio-visual formula, through their release “Syncropath” (released on DVD only via Site Sync in 2011), which was masterfully reprised here in Florence.

The duo remain in total darkness while above them, on the museum's one bare wall, ever-shifting figures are projected: graphics born of a schematic and beautifully cybernetic vision of reality, in a chaotic stream of consciousness, amid TV cut-ups, loops of obsessive geometric patterns and visions from inside an artificial mind.

A synesthetic immersion that leaves no room for catching your breath or reflecting, and which left all of us happily exhausted by the end. Slotting in Fennesz's set after such an all-consuming experience as Schnitt's proved no easy task.

After a few seconds, the Austrian artist's ambient, dronic soundscapes unfolded. A delicate dew settled over the luminous streaks of sound so dear to “Black Sea” or “Venice”, while small cell-like structures built up, constantly shaping new scenarios. No guitar, just a tablet and a spasmodic concentration that never left Fennesz until the end of the performance, which unfortunately lasted only about half an hour.

A length that did nothing to compromise the emotional beauty of the set, though one would have wished for it to be explored further. It's a flaw that stands alone, however, as International Feel once again proves capable of combining elegance with an artistic vision that's never predictable, and a keen ability to sense and analyse the hallmarks of the best electronic music.

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