6. RapoonDarker By Light
Zoviet France was a hug deal to me, the collection of Zoviet France records I got into, which I guess sort of stemmed from getting into stuff like Einstürzende Neubauten, was like, all paths kept leading to Zoviet France, but it wasn’t long before I went to a record store looking for more Zoviet France records, because I had one or two, and came across a Rapoon record – it had a Indian sort of vibe on it, I forget the name of that one, but it was the first one that I got and I listened to it relentlessly. Although it wasn’t anything other than background music it was so sort of eerie, and timing wise, the tempos he chose just sounded at the time like they were just dictated by these weird loops and shit, but the more I started looking in to Robin Storey, who is Rappon – his artwork and his work in general – I realised that it takes, in my opinion, an incredibly specific mind to be able to make soundscapes as subtle as his and not have them coming across as just some noise whirring in the background. His connection to subtlety; his connection to what it takes to create an atmosphere is second to none, and that record, Darker By Light, I’ve listened to that record two or three thousand times – I always listen to that record. And other records of his too, he’s got so many – I mean if you go on YouTube and look up Robin Storey and Rapoon you can see the art that he chooses and the photos he uses to illustrate it – I mean, you can see a lot in very little.
For me – as ironic as it might sound because everything I do has such a Meatloaf quality to it where it’s like 400 layers and everything’s louder than everything else, and maybe it’s because of that but it’s a huge deal for me – to be able to say the most with the least is just the ultimate for me in terms of artistic accomplishment and Rapoon, and Robin in general, is just unrelenting brilliance, as far as I’m concerned. It’s dark, it’s fractured and it says a lot about society and it’s just, y’know, the timings of some of those little loops that he does, it’s like 5.5/13 time for 10 minutes straight; I love the idea of that sort of meditative, Indian type thing, but with a real fractured and dark industrial quality to it.
