Loop : Music Culture and Technology

Erectile Dysfunction/http://www.loop.cl/

Robin Storey aka Rapoon has an long musical career with more than 40 albums, plus collaborations released on Staalplaat, Soleilmoon, Syntantic, Caciocavallo, Grace Territori Sonor, amongst other labels and numberless appearances in compilations and collaborations.

In 1979 Storey founded Zoviet France along with Ben Ponton and Peter Jensen and worked together for 12 years until 1992, when he started to work as Rapoon and collaborated with other artists. Apart from being musician, Storey -who lives nearby Newcastle Upon Tyne-, he is a painter and also works on videos doing short films.

Rapoon explores vast atmospheres adorned with textures of diverse sources like female singings of the Middle East, Russian folk music, tribal rhythm, sounds that are deconstruct with analog and digital electronics.

In 2006, alongside Mark Spybey they started to work again after a long period in a project called The Reformed Faction of Soviet France and promptly renamed Reformed Faction, releasing the album ‘Vota’ [Klanggalerie, 2006]. The more recent releases of Rapoon are ‘From Shadows Sleep’ released on the Brazilian Essence Music imprint; ‘Mental Travellers’ [Indiestate 2006] and ‘Church Road’ [Tantric Harmonies, 2006].

www.essence-music-com y www.pretentious.net/Rapoon

Are any differences in the way you worked with analog equipment in the early days as Rapoon and nowadays with a laptop?

Yes there are differences but I am constantly trying to work in new ways because I find it helps creatively to approach things from a new or different direction. In the earlier days there were less choices. It was a great achievement to be able to procure a couple of second-hand ¼ analogue tape machines and be able to multi-layer sounds and create pieces in, what would now seem, a very crude fashion. However there is an energy and spontaneity in that direct approach that can sometimes be lost when working methods become more complex. That is why I constantly try and change or introduce new working methods so that there is the element of uncertainty and discovery inherent in the pieces as well as the overall critical methods of composition that come with maturity.

These days I use Pro Tools as my recording, mixing and compositional software because I find it very easy to use and intuitive and it doesn’t get in the way of the creative process which can be a problem with other Audio/midi sequencing software. Pro tools simply replaces a whole load of analogue equipment and allows you to use it in much the same way as the equipment it replaced. I love experimenting and I have not abandoned hardware I just change the bits of equipment that I use but keep some old favourites as they have unique sound manipulation or design characteristics.

Please tell us about The Reformed Faction of Soviet-France and renamed as Reformed Faction made up of former members of Zoviet France [Andy Eardley, Mark Spybey and you]. Are you still involved in this project and what was the purpose behind this reunion?

Initially we were interested to see if we could all work together again and maybe produce some interesting collaborations. We all lived in the same area (around Newcastle Upon Tyne) once more and so it was easy to get together and begin recording. I think the first album produced some good results but the main thing to emerge from this reunion was the development of a working partnership between Mark Spybey and myself. We had both found ourselves working individually along similar paths but perhaps more importantly there was a similar desire to work together as improvising musicians and develop new ideas and explore new directions. This has proved to be the most fruitful and exciting relationship that I have had musically for a long time. (In fact since the early pioneering days of ZF.) Mark and I work together very easily and do not need to discuss or formulate strategies of compositional methodologies. It all comes very naturally and intuitively. It is great to have someone to bounce ideas off, and ideas come thick and fast when we get together.

There is a new album of Reformed Faction, which is now paired down to Mark and myself, which will be out in the next month or so.

We have done a lot of new recordings and have many other projects and collaborations on the go. A new album with Jared Louche of Chemlab is finished and should be out this year on Invisible Records. This is an album of poetry/spoken word with the music composed and played by Mark and me. Expect a lot more work and surprises from the Reformed Faction collaborative project.

Gaining a formal qualification in music has given you a new approach in your music?

I went back to University for myself. When you are younger and you are not really sure what it is that you want to do the experience of university is often coloured with expectations of employment or pressures from elsewhere to somehow ‘succeed’. My first experience of Institutional Education at Higher Degree level hadn’t been an altogether enriching experience and I was determined that I would enjoy and get the most from this Post Graduate experience. The way things worked out was very positive and encouraging and I was able to consolidate and appraise my own work in different contexts and I actually gained confidence in the approaches that I had instinctively realised over the past twenty-five years.

I don’t think I have changed my approach to music but I have a developed a better understanding of the contextual and contemporary relationship of the music I have produced so far in an academic and historical sense.

You were really impressed by Toloka vocals with her traditional Russian singing on 'Mental Travellers', a collaborative album along with Russian artist Evgeny Voronovski. Would you like to continue exploring these kinds of sounds?

I have used female vocalists in the past as sound sources and collaborators and I have been lucky enough to get a whole albums worth of singing from Toloka to deconstruct and reassemble and use in my own work.

I have always loved the expressive and emotional content that can be conveyed with the female voice. Some of the first singing that I remember being really moved by was Scottish plain song that I heard on the radio when I was very young. The songs are sung in Gaelic and so I did not understand the words but that is actually a good thing. I do not speak Russian or Arabic but I have used Traditional singing from Female singers from both of these countries and concentrated on the creative, melodic possibilities inherent in the vocal structures.

I will certainly be using these sounds again in my work and have already incorporated some of Toloka’s singing into new pieces and have a project in mind that will be made almost entirely from deconstructed elements of her singing re-sampled and reconstructed into new compositions.

Could you give us an advance of your next musical projects?

Thanks!

I have been working on a few diverse projects that I have already mentioned and I am also working a new series of video animation pieces that will give some visual reference to some pieces of music that I have already composed. The project further explores the idea of strange disappearances and ‘stepping into other dimensions’.

There is a wealth of such cases that can be researched via the Internet and I have always been fascinated by the fragility of ‘existence’. To give you an example: I work part-time at my daughters school which is very close to my home and one day recently I had about 15 minutes before I needed to leave the house to go to work. It had been an unproductive morning doing chores rather than music and I was feeling tired and frustrated at having to go to work. I decided that I just had to do some recording before I left and so I quickly recorded some keyboard, using trumpet sounds that were played live and completely improvised. It lasted 12 minutes and then I turned of the studio and left for work. When I returned that evening I listened to the piece I had recorded and was inspired by the directness and bleakness of the sounds and so I worked on more pieces and developed a whole album.

If I had decided that I couldn’t be bothered to do anything because there wasn’t time before I needed to go to work then this music would not have existed.

Those consequential pathways are something that continually fascinate and colour my work.

Guillermo Escudero

March 2007