Rrose’s style is both familiar and inimitable. His similarity to associates SØS Gunver Ryberg and Paula Temple anchors a dark sound shot through with very individual mastery. The prolific producer has made waves with a long series of EPs, mixes and live sets (I was introduced to Electronique.it Podcast 153 by a friend), but Hymn to Moisture is his first solo full-length effort.
Rrose’s ability to maintain interest over the course of an hour was never in question—but this album is, nevertheless, a gladly-received gift. Stand-out track ‘Bandage’ is Rrose’s modus operandi compressed into a lean six minutes. The track switches between eerie ambience and severe, sawtoothed chaos. It’s a balanced piece which manages both to relieve and provoke anxiety. Somehow, two opposing modes muscle each other on and off stage without the music feeling indecisive or half-cooked.
These grand washes undulate through the album as a whole, as wired and woozy intertwine. Hymn to Moisture is self-disruptive in a gratifying way. It’s hard to believe something as industrial as ‘Columns’ sits in the same album as the lush ‘Horizon’. Stranger still is that Rrose pulls it off with what feels like minimal effort.
Just as with Ryberg’s Entangled last year, there is a stunning evocation of mood, technical mastery, and transcendence beyond the label of techno. But that’s always the mark of good music: being unable to put the thing into words without feeling reductive. In a way, that’s the point, isn’t it? Music is a medium through which we explore areas of the extra-linguistic, extra-symbolic, and uncategorisable—but not everyone does it with as much style as this.
Hymn to Moisture is available for purchase and stream here.
Words by Andrew O’Keefe
