I know you guys will point me to the appropiate direction with Christian Fennesz and David Grubbs.
There are two absolutely wonderful Fennesz songs that I have heard recently and both are duets with David Sylvian. "A Fire in the Forest" is on Sylvian's "Blemish". "Transit" is on Fennesz's "Venice". These two tracks feature Sylvian's vocals with Fennesz's sounds. They are both fantastic, but the one on "Blemish" is better. The other tracks on "Venice" are pretty good, a few approach heavy rotation listenability. But some of the tracks have a vaguely reminiscent overtone of crappy new age ambience to them, tempered with an "avant garde" edge. In case you were wondering, this is not a compliment. "Venice" is better than earlier Fennesz releases. "Endless Summer", which got high praise at its release pales next to "Venice", and suffers more strongly from the weaknesses in "Venice". Both "Blemish" and "Venice" are worth buying for the Sylvian/Fennesz duets alone and "Blemish" has Sylvian singing to the playing Derek Bailey as well, which is also a wonderful thing to hear. As for post gastr del sol Grubbs, I have heard "Banana Cabbage, Potato Lettuce, Onion Orange", "The Thicket", "The Coxcomb/Avocado Orange", and another one or two but I forget which. "Banana Cabbage, Potato Lettuce, Onion Orange" is a slow, semi-minimal recording of pieces for guitar. Too slow and sparse for me. I listened to it a couple times when it came out in 1997 but haven't felt compelled to listen again since then. "The Thicket" is watered-down gastr del sol, just like some of O'Rourke's post-gds releases. All you will say after listening to this is that gds would never have released an album of this inferior quality. "The Coxcomb" is some awful adaptation of some story with terrible voices. This is the only Grubbs release that should be out-right avoided. So, all in all, my opinion of Grubbs post-gastr del sol repertoire can be summed up as okay and perhaps enjoyable for a listen or two, but not overly compelling. That's my underwhelming report. David K.