The pandemic Christmas of 2020 was approaching when we learned firsthand about the debut of Rüdiger “Before It’s Vanished”new skin Felix Buff, battery Willis Drummond. A priori a surprising musical change, but not so much if one knew his other parallel works with Little Ghost or Dual Split, which already hinted that the young musician from Iparralde, resident in Bera, added other aspects and concerns. But what was truly relevant was the relevance of what was recorded, its undoubtedly very high level and the degree of expanding sounds and textures, of exploring new territories within the wide range of the song format and the twists and turns of psychedelia with a particular atmosphere.
Three years after that revelation, Rüdiger He continues what he started with a second album that once again places him well above the average, any average. “The dancing king” It is as excellent as that one, so ethereal and so resounding, so lysergic and so daring. If not more. Part of a conception rooted in rock of combining simple melodies with expanding sounds of the psychedelic to the intelligent and sober use of electronics and its infinite possibilities, which emits an artistic correspondence with its time, and also with history and the avant-garde. .
Starting the film with “Memories” is to dive into that mixed technique that combines social non-conformity with a statement about the human drama of an African migrant, within electronic interludes, clock sounds using a synthesizer, lyrical passages, inverted piano noises or imploring plucks. . And from there until the last piece, the bucolic and peaceful “Till you’re gone”, the album will not fail to captivate without ever falling into the sin of obviousness. If we had to look for a common denominator, it could perhaps be found in how the songs wake up calmly, with acoustic guitar or piano, until little by little they come alive in beautiful crescendos, as in the somber “Spot on” and its symphonic and evocative ending, or the naked lyricism of “Where I belong” that leads to a forceful guitar dialogue and silky voice with a dreamlike beat.
And it is in its midpoint and second part where the album perhaps reaches its highest levels of inquiry with the jazzy clarinet and double bass of “Once I was away” and its mysterious synthesizers in the background, the electronic and lysergic drift that reaches seven minutes of “The receiver”, in what begins as a calm bossa nova, that impossible three-way musical dialogue between Charles Mingus, Luke Abbot and Radiohead (in their own words) of the levitating title track, or the cross between Low and Beatles of “Savage days.”