Roedelius-Story
(Grönland)
Krautrock innovator Rodelius, now in his mid-seventies, seems to have journeyed through a half century’s worth of musical styles and experiments – with Kluster, Cluster, Harmonia and Brian Eno – to arrive at absolute simplicity. His third collaboration with American electronic composer Tim Story aligns liquid piano motifs with a shifting counterpoint of organic-sounding electronics. For example, the title track, “Inlandish,” juxtaposes the organic melancholy of traditional piano with a soft ambience of just-audible electronic manipulations, burbles of synth and subliminal hiss. Similarly, “Trouvé”’s melancholy piano chords are joined to electronic keyboard tones and tremulous, shivery washes of sound.
The sounds repeat but at shifting, not quite synchronous intervals so that they overlap in different ways at different times. Other instruments slip in and out of the mix – a cello in “As It Were” and “Riddled,” a lonely oboe in “House of Glances” – yet they are secondary to the piano and electronics. These cuts range widely in tone, with some taking on a late classical, Satie-ish purity (“As It Were”) and others flirting with rhythmically driven syntheticism (“Serpentining”). Once, towards the end in “Riddled”, the composers even turn downright playful.
Still regardless of tone or theme, each of these pieces revolves around simple, mesmerically repeated ideas, one expressed in piano, the other in synthesized sound. The two overlap, shadow and complement each other, like vines snaking out of the same pot and sharing light, air and space.
Standout Tracks: “As It Were,” “Riddled,” “Serpentining” JENNIFER KELLY
