The British Robert Cox did not achieve too much fame with the project Rimarimba in the eighties, but a few years ago the reissues of his albums aroused renewed interest in his DiY collages. Which now extends to Cox’s musical activity from before Rimarimba. Thus, under the name The Same, he recorded the 1981 album »Sync Or Swim« with his sister Rebecca and guitarist Andy Thomas, which at the time was released on his own label with the beautiful name Unlikely Records. The home-recording eccentric Robert Cox was also very interested in the collage principle 40 years ago, as the recordings reveal. Here, moreover, his minimal-musique-concrète approach mixes with folk elements, which is spelled out quite differently in the details. The offer ranges from rhythmically dense patterns, as needed with or without the addition of tension by noise parts, to airy interludes of the acoustic guitar, and of course the later name-giving marimba may not be missing. If a name is needed for comparison, the repetitive polyrhythms and stretched guitar tones are sometimes reminiscent of what Cox’s countryman Robert Fripp was about at the time. The Same, though, if you’ll pardon the pun, sometimes venture into even more uncharted territory. One more building block to add to the historiography of the supposedly so precisely measured 1980s.
Sync Or Swim
