Fennesz - Venice
My favorite of Fennesz' records mostly because of 'Rivers of Sand', the heaviest DSP jam I have ever heard... the ultimate desert island DSP jam. Fennesz and his contemporaries milked granular synthesis to the point of it becoming a pedestrian avant style. However, because of his acute melodic skill, and because he is an epic sculptor, capable of shaping and trimming and incising sonic datum into electric fields of sadness, Fennesz is a cut above. Granular flickering gloom is taken to its logical end point on the David Sylvian-guested 'Transit', which I can only describe by comparing it to the final scene in The Thing in which Macready and Childs are sitting together in the snow after everything has gone to shit.