Moving over to Rapoon (from Loop Guru), we've still got our ethnic trousers on but the spiritual vibe is less, shall we say, 'positive'. In fact listening to Rapoon late at night on your on can be pretty scary. I tell myself that it's just tablas fed through some kind of delay but the skin on my cocoa keeps shuddering...

The opening track is almost cheerful, tablas and rattles loping along in front of a long melody played by some sort of wind-up-the-chimney sound. Even here there's an ominous undertow. It's as though the music is heard from a car stranded in the desert with it's radio still playing.

The other tracks seem to be based on pulling Indian music to pieces - small drums play lonely abandoned patterns; fragments of voice float in and out on magic carpets of echo; buzzing clouds of drone spin from ear to ear; distant cries well up from the horizon...

Rapoon work against the usual sense of well-being engendered by Indian music to produce a menacing and fascinating piece of work. If you enjoyed being scared by :zoviet france: you should know that Rapoon is Robin Storey, one of their founding members.

review by: Clive Bell
This text originally appeared in The Wire magazine (issue # 129).
Reproduced by permission.
The Wire on-line index.

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Former :zoviet*france: member Robin Storey continues his probing of the techno-tribal interface under the pseudonym Rapoon. Vernal Crossing is more concerned with the exploration of esoteric rhythmic structures than the previous Raising Earthly Spirits, but it's still long on atmosphere and experimentation, and every bit as fascinating. Storey combines the cut-and-paste sound designs of his former cohorts with the modes of Hassell, Roach, and mysterious, far-flung cultures in the realization of these multi-faceted works. As "Bol Baya" whips itself up into a frenzy of futurist gamelan and whispery electronic underpinnings, Storey then changes gears and abruptly enters a Middle Eastern / William Gibson twilight zone with "Dahina ta" or travels along a dirt road of tape loops and struck percussions during the surreal "Anatapurrah". Gauge your acid drops as you embark on Rapoon's hallucinogenic excursions.

review by Darren Bergstein
i/e Magazine No. 8
phone 602-821-1061 / fax 602-821-1624
2300 N. Yucca
Chandler, Arizona
U.S.A.
85224
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When I was looking around in his store for more stuff, Fohm pointed this album out. He told me that this was Rapoon's most experimental album, which perked my interest, and I was hooked by the second track. It's all seemingly processed tape-loops of dark mellow drumming, messed around with in a variety of ways. Very atmospheric, very moody and filled with deep longing. Sorry if I'm short on descriptive words today, but I'm writing this too early in the morning. Suffice to say that it meets the SleepBot cut, and if there's a copy in sight, make it your own.

review from Ambience For The Masses

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Some of this could easily be mistaken for Muslimgauze, though in fact one member, Robin Storey, was originally from :zoviet*france:. This is more obvious on the tracks utilizing long ambient textures and unusual sounds combined with simple, strong rhythmic pulses. In Rapoon there is also a lot of "Middle-Eastern" type percussion as well. It's all very ambient and quite spooky in places. There's not really much more I can say except that I find it good background music.

review by Sean Davidson
Vivisect

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The most recent and in my opinion the best. Sounds like a perfect blend of the first and second albums. Not as busy as the first but not as spacious as the second. The best elements of the two are combined with a slightly more musical direction. Some sublime melodies on this one. Utterly hypnotic (as are all of these: Dream Circle, Raising Earthly Spirits and this).

review by Matt Hoessli
found in the Hyperreal archives

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From Staalplaat, a most magical CD of real Indian meets Western music with a vast electronic landscape over a constantly powerful yet always varied and dynamic multi-layers of tablas and Indian percussion. The effect is totally mesmerising with the warm "drones" flowing effortlessly over the dynamic percussive foundations of the music. Superb!

review by Andrew Garibaldi CD Services, Dundee