Tracklsting

1.Chromium dreams
2.Welcome to the space age
3.The voice beneath
4.Bakelite blues
5.stealth coming
6.Blood on the plains of Persia
7.Condensed Nightmares
8.The paranoia of abstaction
9.Chromium dreams (return)

Press Release/reviews.

RAPOON Alien Glyph Morphology (Caciocavallo)

Robin Storey, recording now for over 15 years under his Rapoon guise, has amassed a body of work that categorically transcends even the mythic status of his former recording compatriots Zoviet France. Right from the stoned cycle of Dream Circle, well into the ethno concréte surrealisms of Raising Earthly Spirits, Vernal Equinox, Fallen Gods and some of his other classic mid-90s recordings, Storey's established an acutely individualistic syntax for Rapoon music that inhabits its own singular little corner of the universe. With a catalog now topping 40 albums (plus collaborations that have found him alongside sonic provocateurs such as Randy Greif and Victor Nubla, among others), he shows no signs of slowing down, and, in fact, continues to split genre lines so effectively their meanings become increasingly irrelevant.
Alien Glyph Morphology has its own mythic history. First released as a DVD extolling Storey as the consummate artist (his impressionistic paintings have adorned many a Rapoon cover, and he's an accomplished filmmaker and videographer/collagist as well), the literal recording first saw the light of day as a beautifully packaged collection of two 10-inch vinyl discs. Its compact cousin offers a somewhat different mix, replete with extended tracks and one extra work, and, as is de rigueur with all Rapoon releases, comes housed in a limited edition, hand-made, tri-fold tiger-print housing, bound in an embossed ribbon of rustic parchment. Objets d'art all, Rapoon releases embrace the design aesthetic that came to prominence in the 70s, keeping the flag flying for the kind of audio-visual sculptures fast fading away in this age of the fidelity-challenged MP3 and replicant-blank download.
Storey's music has navigated schizophrenic waters over the last few years, not necessarily a bad thing, moving away from the ethnic forgeries of recordings past and dabbling in everything from drum 'n' bass to rhythmless, rudderless ambient. Regardless of the genre-hopping, his productions reflect uncontestable elegance off their prototypically mysterious surfaces. The works scattered on Alien Glyph Morphology are unified by mournful trumpet samples that slap the melancholy on thick, yet each track works a thematic principle: disembodied voices, ticktock intermittencies and pregnant pauses inform the haunted cadences of Chromium Dreams; Welcome to the Space Age rescues ancient synth caterwauls and striations from oblivion, basking in a brighter technological sheen that runs contrary to Storey's older lo-fi productions; Stealth Coming sees the digital gamelan return in force, wrapped in trumpet gauze, redolent with the kinds of full-bodied loops that is the Rapoon trademark. Storey's fascination with extraterrestrialism, prehistoric markers, the tattered edges of occultist cultures from the ends of the earth, are as reverberant as ever, travelling the spaceways with his usual reliable surety and craftsman's touch.
DARREN BERGSTEIN / The Squid's Ear (www.squidsear.com)





Alien Glyph Morphology takes the listener into a strange and hypnotic sound world built around looped and detailed rhythmic/ drone patterns that go from world music influenced, to tribal, to glitch electronics, to trapped electro jazz rhythms & beyond. Weaved and drifted over by electronic ambient hazes, edgy piano spaced struck cords, eerier and aged jazzy tones and collages of chanted voices.

This is my first foray into the prolific world of Rapoon, which is the sound child of Robin Storey founder of influential post industrial uk music collective Zoviet France. I'll have to admit I'm highly impressed, he managers to present a mix of sounds that is very alien, yet beautiful - balancing between been disorientating and strangle comforting making very much his own sound that mixers together ambience, world music, jazz, electronica and rich often odd atmospherics'. There's a lot more often synthetic sounding jazz colour here than I was led to believe in the past with his work- he's often written off as been just tribal ambience which really sells it way short as there's so much more going on here than that. It's a difficult sound to describe which in its self makes it very worthwild- been alien, spiritual, musty and ghostly like like music from another planet or an alternative dimension that runs along side ours and takes sound element from our dimension.

A few stand out moments include the opener Chromium Dreams that mixers stretched glitch tones and beats, with synthetic jazz blurred sax like tones, vibe tones and sampled 'come in and out of focus' bizarre dialogue detailing a house break in and weapons of mass destruction- all mixed into a dreamy, bizarre, dense and hypnotic sound soup. Or track Seven Condensed Nightmares which is built around African plain electro rhythms , spacey yet somehow earthy synth curls and drifts. With later on drifting space sax tones and strange chanted eastern/ yet slightly occultic vocal elements.

It all comes in a very nice textured yellow and brown hand-made paper folder with a hand made paper white inner shelve & unsurprisingly is ltd to 400 copies. The
Packaging nicely tops off the rather special, distinctive collection tracks with-in.

Roger Batty.



Making music almost always begins with playing an instrument or taking a sound that is already recorded and manipulating it until it suggests a space or a place or a landscape. Once there is the space created to work in it is a matter of populating that space with other sounds and elements. If they sound foreign and conflicting then there sometimes evolves a natural resolution and a balance between the different facets. A lot of the creative process is intuitive and spontaneous. The same can be said of painting. Filmmaking is a bit more deliberated but still has leaps of spontaneity involved. Usually these make the whole thing suddenly come to life. -Robin Storey (Rapoon)Starting in 2005 with a DVD that came with 20 large Tarot-style postcards, and continuing in 2006 with a double 10 inch LP presented in an elaborately decorated wooden cover, Rapoon returns with the final chapter of his Alien Glyph Morpholgy tryptich, a limited edition CD presented in a hand-made tiger-print folder. As with nearly every Soleilmoon release, this CD is a collectable art object, and indeed, like snowflakes, no two are exactly the same. Compared with the vinyl edition, two tracks are extended in length, and a previously unavailable song, Condensed Nightmares has been added as a bonus track.These days nearly all compositions are subconsciously referenced to the length of the average CD, but the vinyl version of Alien Glyph Morphology has been edited with the time frame of a vinyl record in mind. Play it on a record deck and it will sound different because of the nature of the medium. When I heard again the sounds coming from the old record deck and the vinyl out in the garage, I immediately started making samples to manipulate and incorporate in future compositions. The sound of vinyl is inspiring. -Robin StoreyRobin Storey is well known in ambient music circles for his extensive catalog of recordings, presently exceeding 40 albums, singles and collaborative projects released over the last 13 years.  Aliens, ancient glyphs, UFO's, man's search for meaning in a world where there is none, just one aspect of the human condition. I hope my work is about being human with all its faults, frailties, hopes, dreams, disasters, loves, hates and complexities. There are no answers, just more questions.
-Robin Storey