UNDERGROUND
BY JOHN MULVEY
Samuel Rohrer ★★★★
Codes Of Nature
ARJUNA. DL/LP
The improv/techno/post-rock boom continues apace!
If you fell for the elaborately interlocking grooves of Oren Ambarchi’s Shebang last year, this latest album by Swiss-born, Berlin-based drummer Samuel Rohrer operates in a similar space. Rohrer’s actually worked in the past with Ambarchi, Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær and techno don Ricardo Villalobos – useful contextualising reference points that are complicated somewhat by another previous collaborator, the photographer Nan Goldin. The six tracks on Codes Of Nature have the propulsive forward motion of electronic dance music, and its crispness, but they also feel more organic; as if a bunch of improvising jazz musicians have ruthlessly pared down their practices into a streamlined groupthink (note: Rohrer played everything himself). Try the algorhythmically funky beat science of Scapegoat Principle for starters, which sounds very roughly like Jaki Liebezeit constructing a track for the Basic Channel techno imprint.