Rapoon - TIME FROST - Glacial Movements Records - 2007

First Review

Eine neue Eiszeit breitet sich aus; ihr Zentrum liegt (Vielleicht ist auch hier der Klimawandel am Werk, der für paradoxe Effekte sorgt.) im sonnigen Italien, genauer gesagt beim kürzlich vorgestellten Label GLACIAL MOVEMENTS RECORDS, ins Leben gerufen von ALESSANDRO TEDESCHI mit dem Ziel, sich speziell den Klängen eisiger Welten zu widmen. 

Nach dem Sampler „Cryosphere“ und einer Silberscheibe von TEDESCHIs eigenem Projekt NETHERWORLD hat unlängst die dritte Veröffentlichung des jungen Labels das kalte Licht der Polarsonne erblickt. Waren bereits auf dem Sampler keine Unbekannten vertreten, so ist mit Klangtüftler ROBIN STOREY von RAPOON, seines Zeichens Mitbegründer des Musikkollektivs ZOVIET FRANCE, weitere Prominenz an Bord gekommen. Und STOREY schafft es mit „Time Frost“, dem eisigen Thema inhaltlich einen neuen Aspekt abzugewinnen, indem er ein aktuelles (manche möchten vielleicht sagen strapaziertes) Thema aufgreift: den Klimawandel.

Während über die wahren Ausmaße dieses Phänomens (Ja, nein, vielleicht - und wenn ja mit welchen Auswirkungen?) diskutiert wird, spielt STOREY ein Szenario durch, in dem die Folgen der Erderwärmung paradoxerweise zu einer neuen Eiszeit in Europa geführt haben, unter deren Gletschermassen die Ruinen der menschlichen Zivilisation begraben liegen und auf ihre Entdeckung durch zukünftige Archäologen warten. Stellvertretend für die im Eis begrabenen Überreste dieser untergegangenen Kultur stehen bei STOREY Soundfragmente aus der berühmten „Schönen blauen Donau“ von JOHANN STRAUß, deren Aufnahme er passenderweise aus einer anderen Zukunftsvision entnommen hat: dem Soundtrack des KUBRICK-Films „2001: Odyssee im Weltraum“, der gänzlich aus bereits vorhandenen Werken aus Klassik und Moderne besteht.

Bei STOREY indes bilden die Fragmente von „An der schönen Blauen Donau“ so etwas wie die Ausgangspunkte der fünf Stücke, in denen dann die ursprüngliche klassische Komposition bis zur Unkenntlichkeit verfremdet und verzerrt wird – die akustische Wiedergabe einer Vorstellung von Musik, die über Jahrtausende im Eis eingeschlossen und in ihrem kalten Gefängnis der Eisdrift, den Bewegungen und Verwerfungen der treibenden Gletscher, ausgeliefert ist. So wie das Eis sich in diesem Prozess immer wieder verformt, gestaucht und gestreckt wird, sich übereinanderstapelt, bricht und wieder neu verschmilzt, so verformt und verändert sich auch die darin eingeschlossene Music: „Like ghosts of music trapped in the evershifting permafrost“.

Eine eigenartig berührende Zukunftsvision, und wenn man das Ganze unter diesem Oberbegriff noch etwas weiter denkt, könnte man sich neben „2001: Odyssee im Weltraum“ noch ein weiteres Mal an KUBRICK, beziehungsweise an SPIELBERG erinnern. Das Ende der Science-Fiction Parabel „A.I. – Künstliche Intelligenz“, die KUBRICK aufgrund fehlender technischer Möglichkeiten immer wieder aufgeschoben und schließlich STEVEN SPIELBERG zur Umsetzung „vererbt“ hat, führt den Zuschauer in eine ferne, eiszeitliche Zukunft, in der die Überreste der Zivilisation von Eismassen und gefrorenen Ozeanen bedeckt sind; und wer die entsprechenden Szenen vor Auge hat, dem fällt es leicht, sich bei „Time Frost“ ähnliches vorzustellen.

Spannend ist die Idee, ein Musikstück vor einem elektronisch-eiskalten Hintergrund die Verformungen und Transformationen des ewigen Eises mitmachen zu lassen. An der Umsetzung ist nicht zu meckern; was schließlich herauskommt ist angemessen eisig, bekommt für die Idee einen Novitätsbonus – und ein Hauch von Knistermusik ist auch dabei. Europa ohne uns. Und wenn man schon einmal in dieser herrlichen Untergangsstimmung ist, dann sollte man gleich die Lektüre von ALAN WEISMANs „Die Welt ohne uns“ anschließen, in dem die Menschheit gleich gänzlich verschwindet (inklusive der Archäologen), so dass man alle Hoffnung auf die Entdeckung ihrer Ruinen auf außerirdische Forscher setzen müsste.

NONPOP.DE
 

Fourteen Review

ROCKERILLA (november-december 2007)

Fifteen Review

Robin Storey refers to his work as “soundtracks”, and this programmatic aspect is as apparent as ever on Time Frost. Admittedly, its visual subject/object is entirely conceptual, playing in each listener’s head-cinema, but it does follow a Storey-ed script. His credentials as a sonorous screen-player are well-established, largely articulated in an esoteric netherworld of ritual/ethno ambient. The Rapoon project is one of some longevity, established in 1992, before which Storey was leading light in the dark ambient drones and industrial (m)alchemics of the :zoviet*france: collective, intrepid ethno-sonographers and sowers in the seeding bed of what was to grow into the thriving (post-) industrial ambient underground of the 90s. But back to concept...

Time Frost envisages the dystopian possibility of a new global warming-induced Ice Age enveloping Europe. Storey himself trails it as “...an imaginary recording of the mutational process of sound locked into ice and transformed over millenia.” This is mediated through slivers of sections of sound sliced from Strauss’s Blue Danube being choreographed into mutant motion. Fragments rent from one of our civilisation’s more iconic cultural artefacts lie in suspension, like ice-bound sonic fossils awaiting unearthing and interpretation by future archaeologists. But their inbetween glacier days are not cast in shadow’s sleep, but instead enter into a looping limbo of altered and altering states.
 
Rapoon has always been about loops and a certain trance-like reiteration, and Storey is not about to make radical shifts in compositional strategies. The new is in the source sounds and how they are manipulated and emplaced into conceptual frame. Segments of orchestral samples, variously treated, are hard panned back and forth across the sound stage to create the luminous fluid tableaux of initial movements, “Glacial Danube” and “Thin Light”, with a lighter shade of processing issuing in transparent icy timbres. These are essentially thematic variants run through filter modulations, arcing across their phase shifting replicas. The advent of “A Darkness of Snow” signals a gradual descent into more tenebrous terrain, streaked with more tonal grit and grime. The real heavyweight, though, is 34-minute centre/endpiece “Ice Whispers”. It first revisits the relative serenity of the early episodes, but then Storey’s material, always returning, protean, continously reflecting back on itself and shapeshifting, embarks on a sudden precipitous plunge. The listener is pulled down into a dark vortex in which the contours of the keynote phrase are thickly smudged into a whirling drone cloud teeming with treble scratch and bass rumble before returning, re-attenuated, to base, its keynote theme twirling above the frost-bound tundra. A journey, then, through cycles spun and message manipulated into meaning mist, which each must navigate by colour.

FURTHERNOISE

Sixteen Review

The very latest release from this Italian cold ambient label is from the UK’s Rapoon, otherwise known as Robin Storey, ex member of legendary northern ‘ambient industrialists’ Zoviet France. Time Frost is centred around two ideas: one, in an apparent paradox, is that the present threat of global warming will not result in a general warming of the earth but instead plunge us back into an ice age (it goes something like this I believe but any climatologists out there please feel free to jump in and correct me...  it has something to do with the observed fact that over the last couple of decades atmospheric temperatures have cooled and also that meltwater from the Greenland icesheet is changing salinity levels in the ocean and disrupting the flow of currents that help to keep the northern hemisphere ice-free by releasing heat... so if those currents can’t do their job properly then there’s the possibility we may yet be covered by miles-thick ice sometime in the next tens of thousands of years....); and two, taking tiny fragments of Johann Strauss’s “Blue Danube” and subjecting them to manipulation, stretching and looping with the idea being that each fragment represents a surviving piece of a former civilisation locked in a future sea of ice and consequently being discovered and interpreted by archaeologists. It is interesting how something as famous as Strauss’s signature waltz can be rendered unrecognisable and unintelligible in such a way and yet still retain a strong sense of icy  beauty and vitality whilst simultaneously creating a sonic backdrop to beautiful yet alluringly dangerous landscapes. “Thin Light” is an eternally stately waltz swirling its way through the snowfall, the dancers appearing and disappearing through gaps in the curtain of flakes whilst “A Darkness of Snow” is the heavy crush of white that inevitably envelops all that which slows its step and finally stops it, the cold sapping the strength and the consciousness drifting off into blessed oblivion. The peril continues to stalk in “Horizon Discrete”, an edgy tension accompanied by heavy exhalations, skitterings and paddings, a disorienting and placeless keening overarching all, but whether created by voice or natural sound remains undetermined. We are after all witnessing nature at her most serenely desolate...

Seventeen Review

 

Written by Matthew Spencer

Sunday, 02 December 2007

Two of ambient music's greatest strengths are conjuring up isolated locations and immense timelines. In Time Frost, Robin Storey uses them to imagine a Europe chilled by ocean currents altered by global warming. It is easy to be cynical about climate change as an artistic subject considering its status as Hollywood's pet-cause of the moment.  Time Frost does something far more satisfying: it calls to mind vivid images that do not need to be interpreted through an ideology. Glacial Movements Considering the chilly subject matter, the album has a thick, full bodied sound. Storey used an old vinyl copy of Strauss' Blue Danube for much of the source material. Even though the piece is digitally processed beyond recognition, the richness of the orchestra and the snowy crackle of the record still remain. That analogue glow colors the sparse, unaccompanied loops, providing variety to the simple, repetitious song structures. Even in the arid, droning "Horizon Discrete," the fluidity of Strauss' music remains intact, like the wind blowing up drifts from a glacier. The hypothetical waste-land that Storey envisions is not featureless and uniformly hostile. The time lapse waltz of "Thin Light" elegantly evokes a winter sunrise. Bubbly synthesizers mimic a thick, wet snow-shower in "A Color of Darkness." Without shouting the message, these tracks suggest that the world's beauty will continue, even if it becomes too hostile for us to live on it. Despite a personal affinity for the natural world, music with environmental themes has always struck me as cheesy. Although the destruction humanity inflicts on the planet is truly dramatic, it is easier to make an episode of Captain Planet than a nuanced work of art. By remaining ambiguous, however, Time Frost has a much better chance of aging well than the bloated pontifications of Live Earth. Even if global warming is not your crusade, you can still sit back and enjoy this album. No moralizing is required.

BRAINWASHED

Eighteen Review

CHAIN D.L.K.

Nineteen Review

ROUGH TRADE SHOP

Twenty Review

Manipulated Strauss samples evoke a frozen Danube River on Robin Storey's latest offering.

With Time Frost, Rapoon founder (and former Zoviet France member) Robin Storey explores the idea of a future European ice age. Taking the iconic Danube River as his starting point, Storey imagines the river frozen solid. Marrying the imagery with the music, Storey takes sampled snippets of Johann Strauss' "Blue Danube Waltz" from vinyl lock grooves, loops them over one another, and processes them in the studio. The result is less static than one might expect, but then again, ice itself isn't as static as it appears. It grinds against itself, breaks off into sheets, compresses, forms ridges. Likewise, the fuzzy looped string tones of opening track "Glacial Danube" are similarly dynamic, degrading in time as they pan across the stereo channels. It's actually disconcerting, the way one tone will cut off sharply on one channel as another begins simultaneously on the other, sharp and jarring as frostbite. Things go deeper on "Thin Light." The sound degrades less, because there's less of it to degrade; the high end, the tinny treble, is gone now, leaving only the icy depths and the melancholy mid-range. "A Darkness of Snow" deepens things further, tempting sleep with slow rolling distortion, and while "Horizon Discrete" starts off with the tension of sustained violins, it ends with a deep, almost oceanic drone. These admittedly fascinating pieces are, in a way, mere preludes to the final track, the half-hour epic "Ice Whispers." Though it utilizes similar sounds and techniques to the earlier tracks, its length gives Storey the chance to move things at the truly glacial pace its subject matter deserves. Beginning with the omnipresent loops of scratchy violin, it fades into a deep, distorted tranquility, eventually adding hints of echoing clatter, like ice cracking under its own weight and amplified by the natural reverb of permanent winter. Storey's frozen landscapes do an excellent job of melding sound with concept, and if Time Frost is at times stark and inhospitable, it's a testament of how well he has executed his concept.

REGEN MAGAZINE

Twenty-one Review

I remember when Rapoon was starting out in the early 90's. Zoviet-france was in the process of uncertainty and Robin Storey stepped into the spotlight [a weird thing for zoviet-france alumni at the time] and decided to pursue the Rapoon namesake, which actually worked in his favour. Over the next decade and a half, he produced more than 40 releases and collaborations; quite an admirable figure for someone whose music doesn't get a very audience.For his glacial project, Storey imagined "tiny pieces of former cultures survived locked in the ice and waiting for future archeologists to discover and interpret them." On "Time Frost", he used vinyl lock grooves of Strauss's "Blue Danube" as the backbone for the hour long piece. Five pieces act as reminders to locked memories. The sounds are ethereal, cold, but never alien. Fragments of glacial shifts can be imagined as the music progresses. Storey is quite good at manipulating "Blue Danube" into unrecognizable movements of auditory, shifting sounds. With ebbs and flows, the landscape becomes hazy, almost obtuse, as crackling of the vinyl groove is heard underneath the echo-filled vicinity. Turtle-pacing of the record ensures the listener gets a firm grip on every nuance locked away in the deepest, darkest corners. Hands down, I cast a vote for "Time Frost" as Storey's most remarkable project since the days of zoviet-france.

Tom Sekowski by GAZ-ETA (VIVO PL)

Twenty-two Review

Score: 7.5/10

It’s now December, and the landscape outside is covered by a great thick white blanket accented by shadows of dying trees and silver ice with dripping frozen water to form small glaciers all over the pavement. My hands are dry and cracking yet the air is moist and full of fog blinding my far-sighted vision. It’s times like this when the earth is both beautiful and destructive all at once. The ice is dangerous and slippery, yet the white shadows of winter are breathtaking and stunning. At night, the moon shines down upon this desolate land creating a vast candle lit landscape of an earth frozen in time. And as I sit here listening to Time Frost by Rapoon, I become one with this earth. One with my surroundings, one with my frozen chaos that blows outside my window.

Each note from Time Frost that pours out of my speakers and drifts into my ears takes me away to a beautiful ambient landscape. Reminiscent of Biosphere's Substrata album, Time Frost encapsulates the sounds of winter and a frozen world in music. But there’s something different about Rapoon. It would be very easy to simply make a droning album of sounds in textures, throw in some blowing wind samples, name it Time Frost, and then it would be considered a “winter” album. Instead, Rapoon created a very versatile ambient album. There’s a little bit of everything ambient contained in this CD. The first track "Glacial Danube" is a very slow moving transcending soundscape similar to the styles of Stars of the Lid or even a bit more melodic reminiscent to Windy and Carl. By the time you've reached track four, "Horizon Discrete," the album has gotten much darker. This track is very pulsing and dark producing slow scratchy tones to develop a stunning soundscape similar to Kiln, or even somewhat Oren Ambarchi.

And then there’s the last track "Ice Whispers". This couldn’t be a better ending to Time Frost . It contains all the diverse beauty on this album into one long 34 minute track. Don’t let the length scare. Simply get lost in it. As I lay here in the dark with the shades wide open to let in the shimmering moonlight bouncing off the melting tea glass frosted on my windows, "Ice Whispers" takes me away into a serine lush world of white, silver, and dying green. All the colors and emotions of winter are spoken in Rapoon's Time Frost. All there are no vocals on the entire album, there are plenty of words spoken here within the tones and dripping textures of winter.

For fans of ethereal music that gets them lost in there surroundings, Time Frost is a great record to get. It’ll scare you and bring tears to your eyes all at once.

Kevin Savo by THE SILENT BALLET

Twenty-three Review

Nou, de lijstjestijd is nog niet voorbij of de volgende top tiener dient zich alweer aan. Op de valreep van de jaarwisseling de nieuwe van Rapoon.
Rapoon is Robin Storey, de oprichter van Zoviet France. Solo is Rapoon redelijk wisselend. Op 'Time Frost' echter een consistent geluid, wat zowel dark ambient als kristal- en kraakhelder geluid oplevert.
Thematisch probeert Rapoon hier de wellicht aankomende nieuwe ijstijd te belichamen. Hij gebruikt kleine stukjes uit 'Die Schöne Blaue Donau' van Strauss, qua werkwijze vergelijkbaar met bijvoorbeeld Biosphere of Scanner. En inderdaad, Biosphere- of Scanner-adepten kunnen met 'Time Frost' hun hart ruim ophalen.
Laat die ijstijd maar komen, met deze cd kom je die tijd zeer goed door! Briljant!

ERRORKREW

Twenty-four Review

Rock a Rolla Issue 12 (january 2008)

Twenty-five Review

Blow Up 116 (january 2008)

Twenty-six Review

Dietro Rapoon si cela Robin Storey, che diede vita a questo progetto musicale nel 1992, dopo l’interruzione dell’avventura Zoviet France. Rispetto a questi, Rapoon accentua campionamenti e ritmi dell’area mediorientale, ma in questo lavoro le cose suonano diversamente. La gelida poetica che segna le produzioni dell’etichetta Glacial Movements (vedi recensione Netherworld/Mørketid), segnano il carattere dei suoni, che si presentano come il commento ideale di uno scenario degno del miglior James Ballard prima maniera (i romanzi della quadrilogia delle catastrofi).

In un certo senso è il documento sonoro di una storia futura, quella di una nuova glaciazione di cui Storey immagina che questi suoni ne sarebbero le tracce ghiacciate e conservate nel permafrost in seguito a una mutazione climatica. Il simbolo del disastro è il Danubio ghiacciato e così si parte proprio dal campionamento di frammenti dell’An der Schönen Blauen Donau (Il bel Danubio blu) di Johann Strauss Jr.,nell’edizione usata dalla MGM per la colonna sonora di 2001 Odissea nello spazio. Glacial Danube, infatti, apre le danze campionando dal vinile con tanto di tipici scricchiolii. Un valzer elettronico a base di frammenti reiterati e triturati. Affascinante. Le tre tracce seguenti, tutte di analoga lunghezza (intorno ai sei minuti) sprofondano nello stesso solco e preludono al gigantesco blocco di ghiaccio di oltre mezz’ora, Ice Whispers, vertice dell’album che si inabissa in lande orfane del sole.

QUADERNI D'ALTRI TEMPI nr.11

Twenty-seven Review

Reformed Faction est le nom du nouveau projet de Mark Spybey et  Robin Storey,ceux-là même qui fondèrent :zoviet*france: au tout début des années 80. The War Against... est le deuxième album du duo spécialiste de l'indus-ambient et fait rapidement suite à Vota, ce dernier étant paru seulement l'an passé sur Klanggalerie. Spybey (aussi connu pour son projet solo Dead Voices on Air) et Storey semblent travailler toujours de la même manière, combinant et manipulant avec raffinement et acharnement leurs diverses sources sonores pour l'obtention de véritables peintures musicales aux ambiances monacales. Du reste, comme au temps de :zoviet*france:, le duo soigne également ses emballages avec ici l'utilisation d'un luxueux papier cartonné intégrant huit cartes postales peintes par le groupe.
Tout aussi avenant, Rapoon, projet du seul Robin Storey, est dans la lignée de The War Against. mais en plus hivernal, voire polaire. En effet, Time Frost est un beau disque de noël continental ou nordique qui donne envie de se blottir sous la couette ou près de la cheminée, un grog à la main. On sent presque le blizzard nous geler les moustaches au son de ces nappes hypnotiques, frigorifiantes et faussement paisibles. Storey s'est servi pour ce disque de samples du " Beau Danube bleu " de Richard Strauss qu'il a retravaillé à outrance pour créer ces cinq mouvements d'ambient pure et dure dont la pièce maîtresse est le long titre final, " Ice whispers ". De bien jolis murmures de glace en effet !  - Yannick Blay
 

ELEGY FRANCE nr.51

Twenty-eight Review

“Time Frost” is the latest album in a long list of releases dating back to 1992 from Robin Storey, founder member of Zoviet France and now a prolific dark ambient musician in his own right. Based around the theory that global warming is taking the planet into a new Ice Age, “Time Frost” considers the concept that elements of our respective cultures will be encapsulated in the frozen landscape for future generations to discover and interpret. In a further experiment around this idea, Storey takes tiny fragments and the sound of the run out grooves of a vinyl version of Johann Strauss’ “Blue Danube”, manipulates them and reconstructs them into a completely new piece of music. Often representing the frozen landscape it aims to depict, “Time Frost” illustrates a huge slow moving, windswept, icebound terrain that is as unforgiving as it is beautiful. Album closer, the 34 minute epic “Ice Whispers”, takes an interesting turn by adopting a deeper more ominous drone like an oncoming avalanche or the movement of a massive ice flow in both scale and force. This marks a noticeable change in mood from the start to the end of the album that might act as a subtle warning of the eventual impact global warming will have on the world as we know it. (PL:8)PL.

SIDE LINE

Thirty-nine Review

We Włoszech rośnie nam nowa wytwórnia, którą być może za jakiś czas będzie można postawić w jednym rzędzie z czołowymi europejskimi labelami. Glacial Movements, bo o niej właśnie mowa wypuściła nie tak dawno swoje trzecie wydawnictwo i jak zapewnia jej szef - pan Alessandro, w przyszłości będzie dalej skupiać się wyłącznie za zimnych, izolacjonistycznych dźwiękach. Trzymamy zatem kciuki!
"Time Frost" to kolejna już płyta w dyskografii RAPOON, projektu za który odpowiedzialny jest Robin Storey - starszym osobom znany z ZOVIET FRANCE. Podobnie, jak w przypadku opisywanego gdzieś wyżej NETHERWORLD tu także dostajemy do rąk a raczej uszu zimny, arktyczny i zlodowaciały dark ambient co ciekawe oparty na muzyce J. Straussa "Nad Pięknym Modrym Dunajem", chociaż gdybym nie przeczytał tej informacji wewnątrz płyty za cholerę bym na to nie wpadł.
Tak więc "Time Frost" to pięć długich kompozycji (z czego ostatni utwór "Ice Whispers" to ponad 34-minutowy walec) bazujący na mrocznych, zimnych i izolacjonistycznych dźwiękach. Oczywiście mamy tu obowiązko0we szumy, drony jak również przewijające się tu i ówdzie pulsacje - czyli wszystko to co w tym gatunku jest na porządku dziennym. Mimo wszystko jednak słucha się tej płyty naprawdę bardzo dobrze. Muzyka delikatnie płynie i godzinka mija jak z bicza strzelił. Co prawda tego typu płyty przeznaczone są raczej dla konkretnych wielbicieli gatunku, ale zapewniam, że każdy miłośnik lodowatego i mrocznego dark ambientu powinien być usatysfakcjonowany z nowego dzieła RAPOON. Jak dla mnie osobiście jest to jeden z lepszych albumów, jakie zostały wydane w minionym roku i trzymam kciuki za kolejne wydawnictwa Glacial. Warto jeszcze wspomnieć, że całość została wydana w eleganckim matowym, "klimatycznym" digipacku - jeszcze jeden powód do zakupu. Polecam!

vote: 8

written by: Tomasz Lewicki

BEAST OF PREY MAGAZINE

Forty Review

 
Circuit Breakers column by Darren Bergstein
Robin Storey, aka Rapoon, has always been an industrious fellow, what with another handful of releases spread out over differing labels throughout 2007. His debut on Italian newie Glacial Movements, Time Frost, finds him ever-so-slightly deviating from his aural signature; although his is a catalog that isn’t without its detours (say, Cold War Drum ‘n’ Bass, for instance), Storey’s carved out such an acute niche for himself that he’s practically his own genre. Time Frost is an ode to frozen isolationism, Storey utilizing snatches of Strauss’s Blue Danube as the basis for his demonstrative loops, of which he then twists, corkscrews, and otherwise manipulates into some pretty spellbinding shapes. Place this album right next to Wolfgang Voigt’s various Gas projects of the 90s, and sensorialism becomes an autonomic function. In general, Storey’s expertise lies in mapping out and navigating a mood; here, it’s lucid dreaming or various psychogeographic states, organizing a series of revolving faux-crescendos that conceal latent power. “Horizon Discrete” makes the bite of wind chill a tangible presence coating the speaker fabric, and the softly cooing droneblitzes of “Thin Light” circulate vividly enough to pierce the darkness, but it’s on the half-hour-plus “Ice Whispers” where Storey’s seemingly “tiny” sounds are writ large: massed chorales of sound that surge, billow, hover, and enshroud the ear in a veritable tour de force of symphonic beauty. A highwater mark in the Rapoon oeuvre, and one of Storey’s best recent recordings. 

SIGNAL TO NOISE Issue #49

Forty-one Review

Robin Storey está de volta com o seu enésimo disco, mas o primeiro de 2007 se descontar Palestine, editado em parceria com Pacific 231. Para este Time Frost, Robin Storey criou uma situação imaginária, decorrente de um dos efeitos possíveis do aquecimento global: uma nova glaciação da Europa. Depois, num futuro distante, os arqueólogos teriam acesso a fragmentos de uma cultura passada, preservados pelo gelo e, após a descoberta, seguir-se-ia a interpretação. Time Frost utiliza este conceito e recorre a pequenos fragmentos de "Danúbio Azul" - lock grooves mais concretamente, retirados da banda sonora de 2001, Odisseia no Espaço – como ponto de partida para as cinco composições que integram o álbum, decorrentes da sua manipulação e re-arranjo. Time Frost é então um documento imaginário do processo mutacional do som aprisionado em glaciares, da sua transformação fantasmagórica no decurso de longos milênios. O som, apesar dos samples de música clássica, nada tem a ver com British Council em 2005. A granulosidade, o ruído do vinilo gasto e os loops curtos desmaterializaram de tal forma o material original que dele não resta mais do que uma impressão difusa. Tudo quanto se abarca são drones sobre drones, vagas etéreas de melodia em fluxo e refluxo, revelando uma imensa paisagem Antárctica, imponente e hostil, marcada apenas pela ação da natureza – luz, sombra, ventos e neves. PR – 9,0

ROCK UNDERGROUND

Forty-two Review

Black Magazine issue 48

Forty-three Review

I've loved all the other work I've heard by Rapoon so I'm pleased to be able to bring you this lovely CD on Italian label Glacial Movements. 4 tracks of varied ambience using guitars and electronics for a dense, beautiful sound that has some searingly epic moments. What's really nice is the way they all come together at the end to form a 34 minute piece that uses motifs and elements of all 4 with added drones and textures. If you like ambient music this is a must-listen. Striking, well crafted and full of feeling. Gorgeous.

SMALLFISHSHOP

Forty-four Review

ELEGY IBERICA Nr. 10

Forty-five Review

Det mennesketomme, sneklædte landskab indtager også en vigtig plads på Rapoons album Time Frost, men her ses det ikke gennem alkoholens troldsplint, men gennem den kendte klassiske komponist, Johann Strauss. En forklaring må vist være nødvendig! Her får vi den fra Robin Storey, der står bag Rapoon, i de medfølgende linernotes:

"En af følgerne ved svingningerne i vejrets klima, som er resultatet af den globale opvarmning, er, paradoksalt nok, en ny istid, der kan komme til at omfatte hele Europa. Time Frost er baseret på dette koncept og bruger små fragmenter af musikstykket "Blue Danube" af den kendte europæiske komponist, Johann Strauss. Jeg forestillede mig, at små stykker af forgangne kulturer overlevede indespærret i isen og at de blot ventede på, at fremtidens arkæologer ville opdage og fortolke dem. Jeg brugte en vinyludgave af "Blue Danube" (en MGM indspilning fra 1968). Disse indspilninger blev udgangspunktet for de oprindelige fem kompositioner på Time Frost, der så blev manipuleret og genarrangeret til at blive fem nye kompositioner. Time Frost er en imaginær optagelse af lydes mutationer i is hørt over årtusinder. Som spøgelser fanget i et evigt skiftende frostlandskab."

Det er lige så fascinerende at lytte til Time Frost, som det er at høre om selve skabelsesprocessen. Her er et eksempel på, at den vidtløftige, abstrakte filosofi forener sig med den taktile musik. At høre Time Frost er virkelig som at høre isens bevægelse gennem en gammel rejsegrammofon. Det er overvældende og sublimt. Naturens omvæltning af den klassiske musiks hegemoni. Her er det ikke naturen, der gøres til en underordnet del af den klassiske musik (romantikkens poetik), men stykker af den vestlige musikkultur, der bliver en del af naturens egen musik: den muterende proces, hvor ting forvitrer og forgår, men også overlever som fragmenter fra en svunden tid. Det posthumane viser sig her som en omskrivning af den europæiske musikhistorie. Svimlende ambitiøst, ja, men netop fordi, der kun tages udgangspunkt i en enkelt komponist, der så at sige bliver en metonymi for den større helhed, så lykkes det. Strauss' musik er kendt, men ikke overeksponeret som de virkelig store: Beethoven, Bach og Mozart. Derfor kan Robin Storey med større held underliggøre den i sine fem formidable kompositioner.

GEIGER.DK

Forty-six Review

Préoccupé comme nombre d’entre nous par les évolutions climatiques de notre planète, l’anglais Robin Storey a décidé , à travers "Time Frost", d’aborder ce thème aux conséquences nombreuses et dramatiques. Fonte des glaciers et de la calotte polaires ou encore salinité et niveau des océans modifiés apparaissent en filigrane de cette fresque musicale épurée, se déployant au fil de paysages numérique saisissants. Un album portant l’agrément de notre Institut de climatologie musicale qui saura aussi bien rafraîchir votre environnement domestique qu’éveiller votre conscience écologique.

SOLENOPOLE mission 126

Forty-seven Review

Rapoon - Time Frost
5 skladeb / 59:03, Glacial Movements / distribuce v ČR HORUS CyclicDaemon

Druhým umělcem, který si pohrál s tématem věčného ledu a sněhu je Angličan Robin Storey, zakladatel legendárních Zoviet France (dvě třetiny původní party jsou znovu pohromadě jako Reformed Faction) a dlouholetý solitér pod korouhví projektu Rapoon. Ten postavil svou desku Time Frost na hypotéze, že globální oteplování může paradoxně díky odklonu Golfského proudu od Evropy přinést tomuto kontinentu novou dobu ledovou.

Vzal tedy jednu ze signifikantních kompozic starého kontinentu, Straussův valčík Na krásném modrém Dunaji, vybral z něj několik malých zvukových kousků a ty uzamkl do svých pověstných smyček a nekonečného labyrintu atmosférických ech. Pryč jsou postmoderní indické rágy, koketérie s tanečnem, UFO i velmi niterné a temné industriální vize. Robinovy kompozice jsou zahalené kusy elegantního valčíku obepínající permafrostem ztvrdlou Vídeň.

Vzdušnost nových kompozic je dle autora „imaginární kus hudby zmrzlý v ledu, čekající na budoucí hudební archeology, kteří ho po objevu budou znovu interpretovat“. Kdo má rád ambientní stránku tvorby Rapoon, ten si zajisté pošmákne. Deska je totiž, možná i díky výběru samplovaného základu, znovu důkazem, že smyčkový atmosférický král má jméno Storeyho úhlavního projektu. - 85 %

FREEMUSIC.CZ

Forty-eight Review

As Rapoon, Robin Storey can assume a number of guises. His audio work can be so dark as to be toxic, oily dark, nightmares of industry, fresh hells. He can also toss varied-coloured tiles at the wall and create wonderful and byzantine mosaics which range in mood from giddy to threatening. Good examples of such work include his double CD "Cold War", or his recent release on Vivo, "Obscure Objects of Desire".

However, his name is associated almost as much with the cold, desolate regions the label Glacial Movements has staked out as its own. And Time Frost is a kind of opus in celebration of the Arctic, its serpentines of loose snow dancing across the tundra. If the landscape is monochrome and featureless to many of us, Storey finds this inspirational rather than tedious and uses looping and repetition as his guiding aesthetic.

In his liner notes, Storey posits a textural theme as well, based on scientific speculation that global warming may weirdly enough bring down a new Ice Age on Europe. In order to imagine a Danube that has finally, really turned blue because it has frozen over, he uses "tiny fragments of music from an iconic European composition, Johann Strauss's Blue Danube". In fact, trumping one meta-fiction with another, he exclusively used locked grooves from the soundtrack to the equally-iconic movie, Stanley Kubrick´s "2001". (Interestingly, it has been done equally well before. Several years back, Andrew Deutsch released "Loops Over Land" on his tiny label Magic If, in which all the samples were created from locked grooves looping the music of Gustav Mahler.)

Imagining further into the future, post-Ice Age, when the glaciars recede and future archeologists sift through what we left behind, "Time Frost is an imaginary recording of the mutational process of sound locked into ice and transformed over millenia. Like ghosts of music trapped in an evershifting permafrost."

It´s an unspeakably beautiful five-part suite, in which maybe more purely than ever before over the course of an entire hour-long album, Rapoon succeeds in evoking not only the deceitful barrenness of the far north, its white-on-white textures, but also the bite of its cold air, the sting of snow moving horizontally on the cheek, the smell of the place - for it does indeed have its own special smell.

Among his most beautiful listening experiences. (Stephen Fruitman)

SONOMU.NET

Forty-nine Review

THE WIRE nr.286 (december 2007)