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Roedelius - Snapshots/sidesteps
So hands up if you've heard of Roedelius?Well, I must confess that when this CD arrived I hadn't the foggiest idea who he was. 'Some new electronic producer' I thought, but the accompanying press release told me otherwise. Both the BBC and Mojo magazine know a lot about him and think he's very good (one of [electronica's] most important well-springs, according to the beeb). Feeling much less of a well-researched and capable reviewer then I had before the postman had dropped this disc onto my doormat, I set out to discover who Hans-Joachim Roedelius was.
So here are ten random facts I found to go with my initial impressions of the ten tracks on 'Snapshots/Sidesteps', an album of collaborations or remixes or minor fiddles with the music of various artists from George Taylor to Patrick Pulsinger.
1. He is German. Track 1, 'ad honorem' is a head-nodding piece of lazy dub and found sounds that is pretty uneventful but oddly captivating.
2. He is in his seventies. 'belvedere' is a collaboration with TV composer George Taylor and Fratellis and is a piece of piano and found sound based ambience.
3. He was in the krautrock band Kluster with Dieter Moebius. 'claire obscure' is the addition of 'melody lines or layers of sounds' to a piece by Patrick Pulsinger, there's little melody to speak of but the textures and grooves and the way they slowly shift in this ambient piece are reminiscent of woob.
4. He has released more than eighty records. 'dynamo' begins as a composite of abstract sounds and then slowly grows into up-tempo glitchtronica.
5. In 1999 he opened for Roger Eno and the Big Chill's very own Lol Hammond at the Gathering in Philadelphia. 'elektrum' is a studio collaboration with Alex Patterson (he of The Orb) and is a combination of dub and strange, exotic sounds (can you see a pattern developing here?).
6. When Conrad Shnitzler left Kluster the remaining two members renamed the band Cluster. 'fait accompli' sees the Cluster twosome reunited, live at a festival, for some micro-editing madness which veers between samba and drum and bass.
7. Brian Eno wrote the forward to Roedelius' biography. 'gusto' is additions to material by Alec Way and Eric Bonerz. The additions are nice enough, but the underlying material is pretty mundane.
8. Roedelius co-founded the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, an experimental music club in Berlin in the late sixties. 'hoc volo' is a collaboration with New England producer Timothy O'Keefe of Cozy Music. Too slow to be techno, too fast to be armchair electronica it's hard to imagine where you might want to listen to these heavy, metallic drum parts (at an experimental music club perhaps), but it acts as a nice to foil to the track that follows......
9. He worked as a coal-miner and was imprisoned for two years in East Germany.....a collaboration with Psychonavigation artist David Bickley is one of the highlights of the album, not because it is more tonal then most of the material here, but because it has a wonderfully soft, lazy groove and some beautiful sounds.
10. He also worked as a chef at a nudist camp in Corsica. The final track 'juste milieu' is a live collaboration with Fabio Capanni, whose found sounds of nature and languid electric guitar bring the album to a suitably engaging and mellow close.
Overall then, a fascinating guy who makes some fascinating music. I found it hard to make it from start to finish in one go but there are some great moments here. A small beef is that, only having known him for ten tracks but now knowing that he is extremely prolific, he could do with an editor. My initial feeling is that weeding out some of the weaker material, whilst making his output less copious, might focus its undeniable quality a bit more.
Jez Wells
Snapshots/Sidesteps by Roedelius is out now on Pychonavigation
Roedelius performs at The Big Chill 2007 at Eastnor.
www.roedelius.com
Written: 10th May, 07
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