»Other Rooms« is a wonderfully unique album that blends dancefloor and chill-out in ways that are both familiar and unexpected. While there are no beats in the traditional sense, the sounds created by Belgian artist Adriaan de Roover reference both bass-heavy sound systems and sprawling relaxation chambers. The opening piece »Yet«, for example, crackles like a Pan-Sonic track before powerful strings propel it into the British universe of weightless. De Roover’s musical permeability and benevolence towards all sounds is the defining modus operandi of this album. And thus the harsh meets the beautiful, creating moments of surreal contingency. Or, to put it less pretentiously, anything goes on »Other Rooms«.
On »Homebound«, melancholic melodic arcs à la Burial’s »Untrue« are still audible, concretised with varying urgency as if through a prism. »L’air perdu«, on the other hand, is initially permeated by an insectoid flicker, under which rumbling basses abound. The mood becomes morbid before the two-minute mark. Frequencies bounce around like a badly wired amplifier, with voices babbling over them. It sounds like a mixture of Logos’ »Cold Mission« and 8Ball’s »Eleusis«. Dramatic choirs, straight out of The Matrix, define »Practice Time«, and »Dank u« finally escapes earthly spheres. »Other Rooms« is an incredibly coherent album that dissolves its opposites in a vacuum.
Other Rooms
