Now-Again Records has enjoyed a long and creative partnership with Munich-based multi-instrumentalist JJ Whitefield, creative force behind the Poets of Rhythm, Whitefield Brothers and Karl Hector & The Malcouns. Rodinia, his latest project, is quite different than anything that's come from his oeuvre to date, but follows in the line of the Poets of Rhythm's great Discern/Define, as it reaches back to Krautrock's experimental heyday but pushes its boundaries with a post-hip-hop approach.
That's to say that everything you read in the header above is true, but the ambient sound Whitefield and his Rodinia collaborator - saxophonist and keyboardist Johannes Schleiermacher – reached for found itself morphing over the course of a year. What was originally recorded in a two-day studio lock-in, which found Whitefield and Schleiermacher hooking up "all our vintage synths (Korg MS-20, Moog Prodigy, Roland Juno 60, Jen SX 1000, Korg Polysix), triggering everything with a vintage Korg rhythm box, absorbing some mind altering substances and jamming out," was later turned into two, side-long suites, with over-dubbed reeds, drums and guitar, and self-made Moroccan field recordings introducing the project on its Drumside. The result is as winsome and exploratory as those from their forebears, but respectfully distanced from the past's trappings. With original artwork by Jason Jagel.
