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2LP
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AMEL 724LP
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Samuel Rohrer's newest solo album, Codes of Nature, shows the artist making yet more refinements and additions to an already rich catalog of musical ideas. Though he has excelled in collaborative projects with Ambiq, Ricardo Villalobos, Max Loderbauer, Tobias Freund, Dark Star Safari, Nils Petter Molvaer, Oren Ambarchi, and many others, it is fascinating to experience him also working in a field completely his own, yet managing to still give the impression of being fully integrated or connected with a larger musical universe. A strange, intriguing ambiguity between the specific and the universal is indeed what makes Rohrer's music worth playing on a loop -- the cool, downtempo, yet energized constructions on Codes are powered by subtle atmospheric and tonal changes, and work like a camouflage adaptable to any environment. This is a record whose strength derives from its versatility. It's clear that this versatility of sounds has been inspired by a commitment to positive differentiation that is not just a musical one, and that's where this work will inspire others in turn. Personnel: Samuel Rohrer - drums, percussion, electronics, keys, modular synths; Music produced, recorded, and mixed by Samuel Rohrer.
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LP
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AMEL 723LP
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With his Arjunamusic label and a growing catalog of category-defying releases, Samuel Rohrer continues to quietly, yet confidently, make a name for himself as a genuinely unique figure within the European electronic music realm. Over the past decade he has assembled a repertoire of music that fills a sadly neglected gap in the modern musical landscape. That is to say, he has made a number of "electronically"-aided works that never seem to make "electronic-ism" the main selling point or raison d'être. His latest solo album, Hungry Ghosts, again shows the high quality of sonic design that can be achieved by conceptualizing musical passages as living, breathing entities rather than as signposts to some still distant reality. Maybe more so than any of Rohrer's solo records to date, Hungry Ghosts is the one that most unambiguously displays the artist as a kind of inspired sound "cultivator" or landscaper rather than just a straightforward "producer". The emphasis here seems to be biological growth processes rendered in musical form, and in fact some track titles namechecking the biodiversity of the external world ("Slow Fox", "Ctenophora") and neurochemistry ("Serotonin") lend some additional credence to this interpretation. As with previous outings, Rohrer starts with his skills as a genre-resistant percussionist and builds from there, with dense clusters of drum hits and icy cymbal exclamations leading the way into a wide-open atmosphere full of fragmented phrases, marked with strange reversals or compressions of time. The percussive portions and other ambiences merge together in such a way that the latter seems like a kind of shifting, holographic camouflage for the former. Rohrer's already established ambiguity and mystery are the moods that permeate throughout, to be sure, but there are also surprising moments of humorous whimsy (the flourishes of cartoon mischief and teasing silences on the tracks "Human Regression" and "Bodylanguage"), reverence (the optimistic organ swells and steady sequencer guiding "Ceremonism"), and meditative focus (the slow-motion spectral waltz of "Treehouse"). Also notable here are very brief etudes, such as "Window Pain," whose dark, lush ebb and flow actually seem tailored to repeated or looped listening. The material is recorded solo and in a "live/no overdubs" mode, giving it the feel of a well-rehearsed ensemble. And here you come full circle to the idea of "electronic music" mentioned at the beginning here: instead of making you feel that you are in the presence of some fully-realized form brought back from "the future," Rohrer invites you instead to witness fascinating processes of transition and mutation.
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LP
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AMEL 719LP
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With his Arjunamusic label and a growing catalog of category-defying releases, Samuel Rohrer continues to quietly, yet confidently, make a name for himself as a genuinely unique figure within the European electronic music realm. Rohrer is one of those rare alchemical explorers to have truly created a hybrid which is all his own, one that does not just exist to melt distinctions for its own sake, but is a natural result of years of experimentation with both the determination of electronic music and the ludic spirit of "free improvisation". On Continual Decentering, this vision is applied to a set of mostly in real time (live) performed explorations. In keeping with his many years' worth of fruitful collaborations, the tonal palette on this record is one that is expectedly rich for those familiar with his work, yet still surprising in terms of how exactly the differing tonal colors come together. Representative tracks like "Spondee" and "The Fringe" are brimming with dub pulses, noir shivers, and blooming timbral variations. In terms of the emotional atmosphere, the pensive and questioning tone hearkens back to the "wide open" state of electronic music in the mid-to-late 1990s, with a greater clarity and maturity of vision. As with Rohrer's most recent solo work, like the Range Of Regularity album (AMEL 712CD/LP, 2017), Continual Decentering showcases the artist's skill in turning the drum kit into a lead instrument. While the term "lead instrument" denotes a kind of exuberant "Glash", or a clear separation from the rest of the voices in an ensemble, we can take the term to mean something different throughout this listening program of 13 short vignettes. It helps that Rohrer has, in fact, developed a unique and complex hybrid system in which drum hits trigger modular synthesizer processes, the use of which makes for an incredibly fluid response time between distinct sonic events. In contrast to the previous Range album, this new offering is propelled less by interlacing threads of intensity and more by a shared sense of deep listening. As displayed on pieces like "All Too Human", there is a profound sense of attention to silences or thoughtful pauses that maybe hints at another crucial aspect of Rohrer's style. All of the above come together to give Continual Decentering a "live"-ness that will easily translate from recorded document to dynamic performance.
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12"
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AMEL 713EP
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The second EP of Samuel Rohrer's Range Of Regularity album (AMEL 712CD/LP, 2017) presents two more striking reinterpretations. The production specialists on hand for this project include Burnt Friedman and Ricardo Villalobos. Burnt Friedman's dramatic interpretation of "Microcosmoism" pairs up his consciousness of deep bass and analog inventiveness with Rohrer's continually transforming sound objects, making for a flowing and wordless narrative. This is complemented nicely by Villalobos's remix of "Microcosmoism". It carries the energy level of the first EP (AMEL 716EP) over to a new disk, while heavily experimenting with feelings of emotional ambiguity.
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12"
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AMEL 716EP
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Coming hot on the heels of Samuel Rohrer's Range Of Regularity album (AMEL 712CD/LP, 2017) are two EPs of striking reinterpretations. The first comes with remixes by Ricardo Villalobos and Vilod, the collaborative duo with Max Loderbauer. Villalobos's compelling take on "Lenina" pulsates from start to finish with a kind of voluntary anxiety. He pieces together something surprisingly funky and hyper-real from a catalog of distinct percussive hits, time-reversed ephemera, and playful "kitchen sink" ambience. Vilod's "Uncertain Grace" remix induces a feeling of perpetual movement with is a buzzing beehive of activity and an organ-like refrain.
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CD
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AMEL 712CD
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Samuel Rohrer, the multi-faceted, forward-thinking percussionist and producer behind the Arjunamusic Records label, the Ambiq trio, and a wealth of other musical projects, has set out on his own with a new full-length solo album, Range Of Regularity. Constructed almost entirely upon electronically-treated recordings of acoustic instrumentation, with a bare minimum of synthesizer voicing, Range Of Regularity vibrates with a compelling organic-ism, as if old-growth Black Forest trees had conspired together to make an album of ultra-modern improvisational music. Indeed, the record feels limned with contributions from some "other" intelligence, despite being a clear extension of the fluid, percussion-driven musical technique that Rohrer has exhibited in previous years. Opening with the track "Microcosmism", the sound-forest feeling immediately takes effect, and the listener can either enjoying navigating a path through this verdant total environment or just being lost in it. "Lenina" does not abandon this unique aesthetic, but reprises the story with a different vocabulary (in this case, deep synth-bass signals, piano runs and all sorts of hyper-real ventilations). "Nimbus" temporarily dials back the feeling of modular assemblage that powers the previous two pieces, and allows Rohrer's drum kit to come to the fore, working away at a determined snare-driven beat that brings a variety of treated sound ephemera out of their hiding places. After the gentle - but never too precious - interlude of "Sunclue", "War On Consciousness" emerges as the album's infectious tour de force. As the title implies, the feeling here is of using sound to fend off some sort of invasive energy, featuring a full concert's worth of timbral variations and audio events. Incisive rhythmic patterns slice away like finely honed blades at an insistent mechanical chattering, while cautiously walking acoustic bass adds an extra layer of defense. "Uncertain Grace" closes the set out with a busy multi-layered arpeggio punctuated with bass drum hits, from which a melodic narrative gradually emerges. Although similarities are apparent to other progenitors of rhythmic intelligence (classic Can, for example), Range Of Regularity stands perfectly well on its own. Artwork by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic.
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LP
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AMEL 712LP
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LP version. Samuel Rohrer, the multi-faceted, forward-thinking percussionist and producer behind the Arjunamusic Records label, the Ambiq trio, and a wealth of other musical projects, has set out on his own with a new full-length solo album, Range Of Regularity. Constructed almost entirely upon electronically-treated recordings of acoustic instrumentation, with a bare minimum of synthesizer voicing, Range Of Regularity vibrates with a compelling organic-ism, as if old-growth Black Forest trees had conspired together to make an album of ultra-modern improvisational music. Indeed, the record feels limned with contributions from some "other" intelligence, despite being a clear extension of the fluid, percussion-driven musical technique that Rohrer has exhibited in previous years. Opening with the track "Microcosmism", the sound-forest feeling immediately takes effect, and the listener can either enjoying navigating a path through this verdant total environment or just being lost in it. "Lenina" does not abandon this unique aesthetic, but reprises the story with a different vocabulary (in this case, deep synth-bass signals, piano runs and all sorts of hyper-real ventilations). "Nimbus" temporarily dials back the feeling of modular assemblage that powers the previous two pieces, and allows Rohrer's drum kit to come to the fore, working away at a determined snare-driven beat that brings a variety of treated sound ephemera out of their hiding places. After the gentle - but never too precious - interlude of "Sunclue", "War On Consciousness" emerges as the album's infectious tour de force. As the title implies, the feeling here is of using sound to fend off some sort of invasive energy, featuring a full concert's worth of timbral variations and audio events. Incisive rhythmic patterns slice away like finely honed blades at an insistent mechanical chattering, while cautiously walking acoustic bass adds an extra layer of defense. "Uncertain Grace" closes the set out with a busy multi-layered arpeggio punctuated with bass drum hits, from which a melodic narrative gradually emerges. Although similarities are apparent to other progenitors of rhythmic intelligence (classic Can, for example), Range Of Regularity stands perfectly well on its own. Artwork by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic.
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