- "I wanted to create a platform built on both acoustic and electronic music feeding and influencing each other," drummer and producer Samuel Rohrer has said of his label, Arjunamusic. "I had this feeling that there is great inspiration in this combination and contrast." Rohrer's not alone in this feeling. Arjunamusic's signature group is Ambiq, a trio with Rohrer, clarinettist Claudio Puntin and synthesist Max Loderbauer. Loderbauer also plays in Ricardo Villalobos and Moritz Von Oswald's respective trios, each of which favours similar collisions of acoustic and electronic sounds, or, differently put, techno minimalism with an improvisatory jazz sensibility.
Rohrer stands out because he approaches this middle ground from the other direction. Unlike Villalobos or Von Oswald, the Berlin-based Swiss started in jazz. He spent years playing in combos before his turn to electronic music. Range Of Regularity, which lays out his philosophy of "combination and contrast" across 50 minutes, is a product of this different training. Built from an arsenal of layered and processed percussion, the music has the ebb and flow of live performance rather than the cool heartbeat of machines.
This is Rohrer's first solo record, and it's packed with ideas—sometimes to a fault. "Microcosmoism" and "Lenina" groan under the weight of clever detail. There's a Villalobos-like minimal shuffle in there somewhere, but the balance between propulsion and misdirection isn't quite right. This linear space opens out on "Nimbus," an ocean of bowed cymbals and sour pad-like sounds through which the groove weaves like a water snake. From there, the album broadens sonically and expressively, showing the extremes of Rohrer's sound. At one end is the ambient "Sunclue," which glimmers with dawn-like optimism. At the other is "War On Consciousness," 11-odd minutes of Rohrer wrestling with a strange, lurching rhythm, and only half-winning.
Each of these tracks sets up an idea and probes its limits, and Range Of Regularity is defined by this exploratory spirit. Rohrer's experiment doesn't always come off. But when it does it's sublime, as on closer "Uncertain Grace," where a plucked string instrument forms dense cascades, shot through with sombre melody and tantalising dabs of bass.
Tracklist01. Microcosmoism
02. Lenina
03. Nimbus
04. Sunclue
05. War On Consciousness
06. Uncertain Grace