Water Mirror from Floating by Rumpistol / Red Baron
Danish electronic artist Rumpistol, aka Jens B. Christiansen, releases his fourth and most ambitious album yet – Floating – a collaboration with LA based vocalist Red Baron that further explores the post dub-step vocal territories opened up on last year’s Talk To You EP. With tighter song structures, intimate lyrics and the Baron’s ecstatic vocal projections, the two create a parallel world in which the domestic breakdowns of wintry Copenhagen are filtered through surreal sun-bleached Californian dreams, resulting in a robotic and hypnagogic hybrid of soul. The sound, while still recognizably “Rumpistol” in its organically unstable clicks and gurgles, marks an evolution in Christiansen’s thinking, shedding light on the interior landscapes of existential crisis and bliss that he’s been essaying over the last ten years.
The introduction of Red Baron does a great deal to carry this forward. Many of the tracks were written in partnership with the elusive vocalist on an almost subconscious level, through a process where different phrases were recorded until the atmosphere was properly expressed. It’s through the Baron’s heavily processed voice, hovering between male and female timbres, that the ghost of American pop culture finds itself here too. In this way Grace Jones stands tall in a frozen stream on I’m Not Listening, Lionel Richie gets stuck in traffic on a bad trip in Colors Breaking while Kanye pushes his auto-tuned bicycle through the blizzard of Floating.
But as the arctic arpeggiated synths let you know, the album is more about the future than any past, a future where Rumpistol and Red Baron dare to take current genres from the post dub-step and wonky scenes and defy them with the human voice for a dystopic soul music of their own.
Rumpistol Bio
“Rum” is the Danish word for space or room. Since 2003 Rumpistol has released 3 albums, 2 EPs plus lots of remixes and received airplay by John Peel among others. He also runs his own label, Rump Recordings, and has composed various music for TV, theater, films and games. Rumpistol’s live performances include festivals and venues all over Europe as well as in Mexico, China and Russia. He has created live soundtracks and appeared in various improvised setups and constellations. In 2010 he was nominated for the Qwartz Electronic Music Award in the Discovery category for his album “Dynamo”.
Red Baron Bio
As a Danish expatriate in the LA scene, Red Baron has slowly undermined the underground with his addictive moves and subliminal expressions. He has already appeared among the likes of Deerhoof, Don Bolles (The Germs) and Sonns, the latter debuting on Stones Throw in May. The Baron also sings in The Late Great Fitzcarraldos, which in 2011 was nominated for the Nordic Music Prize for their debut album. Aged 6 he fell into a depression when faced with the fact that his red hair and whiter than white skin would never match up to the Jamaican model/singer he adored so much. The rest is history.
Tracklist
| 10. | Water Mirror | 1:30 |
Credits
License
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Project Mooncircle is a Berlin based label and creative collective operating in the left-field sphere of electronic music. Originally established in 2002, it’s diverse back catalogue is one of no musical boundaries. Today much of the label’s output focuses on the fusion of organic and electronic music.