Robin Storey, who used to be a part of the ethnic ambient whisper of :zoviet*france:, loses himself in loops. His work as Rapoon has always been an endless pattern that shifts and alters itself upon subsequent iterations like the re-arrangement of sand across the broad back of a line of dunes. “Via” from I Am A Foreigner, for example, crackles with sand ground deep in a vinyl groove while ambient tones spread across a sun-bleached horizon. You fall into his work, get yourself mired in the shifting sand underfoot, and quickly lose all sense of time and space. Vaguely ethnic drum patterns swirl and circle in the mix, building cascading patterns that move like, well, sand. However, with I Am A Foreigner, Storey has become entranced with something new and, as a result, there is a novel cast to the sonic weather eddying on this record.
A disembodied voice intoning I Am A Foreigner was the creative impetus for this record. Taking a break from recording, Storey wandered into his kitchen in time to hear this sentence ring out in the empty room. His wife had inadvertently left the machine on with her “Teach Yourself Italian” tape running. While making himself a cup of tea, Storey ruminated on his reaction to the strange voice. From this brief accidental moment, an idea grew in his head: how we, as foreigners, are more prone to listen intently due to the newness — to the alien nature — of what we are hearing. With both the tape and his cup of tea in hand, Storey returned to his studio and, utilizing fragments and samples from the language instruction, embarked on a new direction for Rapoon.
The contents of the instruction tape show up most overtly in “Tarsut,” the dueling voices weaving themselves through a whispered ambient drum chant. Elsewhere, the clear voices are stretched like soft taffy into indistinct organic drones while piano melodies play out in stark relief against these amorphous backgrounds as in “Breakfast in Mesopotamia” where the keyboard plays in a trio with a landscape of ululating voices and distant street pipes. “Yarsut” is built from loops and time-stretched samples of choral voices and these elements are vibrant participants in the mix in contrast to their spectral and nearly invisible existence in previous Rapoon releases.
Rapoon is still looped-based music — endless times ’round the mulberry bush — but
Storey’s impetus with I Am A Foreigner has added a vocal element to the work, a foreground intensity of human speech that is a new emphasis to his work (while voices samples played an integral part of What Do You Suppose? from 1999, they were accents to the ghostly music). Previous Rapoon releases have been passive listening experiences; with I Am A Foreigner, Storey has delivered a release that demands your attention –very nice.
I Am A Foreigner is out now on Caciocavallo.
