Reviews:

Press Release (Staalplaat June 1998)

Rapoon's 1998 release for Staalplaat is a distinct break away from his last works (LP for Soleilmoon , CD for Relapse) in the sense that it is more up-tempo, dealing with rhythms and samples throughout. The of course not a techno album, it carries the trademark of Rapoon all over the place. This is music with a very well developed sense of dislocation: eerie choral effects riding very trancey grooves; the familiar strangeness of the shipping news emerging from a murk of drones and overtones. At times it features driving, martial rhythms that almost spell out a new day's pulse and energy.

Robin Storey, aka Rapoon, was a founding member of :zoviet*france:, but left them in the early nineties to concentrate fully on Rapoon. He is at the forefront of ambient and ethnic music inspired electronics.

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The brand new release from this founding member of :zoviet*france:, with a lengthy and dependable catalog (if you like any of the Rapoon releases, then try to find a Rapoon release you don't like), Tin of Drum expands the boundaries further, utilizing the familiar ethnic-surreal loop method somewhere between Maeror Tri and O Yuki Conjugate, but infusing new techniques and perspectives as it goes along. Tin of Drum has a monumental sort of feel to it, with the opening piece 'Not The Time', sounding like the soundtrack for the death of some ancient city in the jungle, spirit-gods fleeing the temples, citizens vanishing, building eroding over a period of centuries. Other tracks have voices you cant quite understand, backed by cycling ambience. Most tracks are short, but capped off by a final opus titled 'Southbound' that starts out with an intense percussive attack but evolves into a sentimental ambient piece with location recordings mixed in. Not one second on this disc can be ignored - mesmerizing!

review from the Manifold Records catalog

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This time it's a 61 minute, 6-track affair, full of some magical multi-synth soundscapes but now more varied with increased use of drums and percussion giving the strong rhythmic base on which a lot of the tracks are built. Far from a traditional use of synths and drums, several of the tracks mix it all into one out-of-focus cauldron of sound, all layers and textures, clearly played and produced, but with a dense quality though which you peer in an effort to extract the component elements that constitute the musical panoramas that unfold, However, the album is much more varied than just this implies and there re a wide range of musical treats from spacey to powerful and this is not only tasty stuff superbly constructed but you can play it many times and still hear something new in the music. Another gem from one of the most underrated contemporary music artists on the planet.

review by Andrew Garibaldi
CD Services, Dundee