AN UNAUTHORIZED TRIBUTE TO RAPOON BY VARIOUS ARTISTS

Why pay tribute to Robin Storey’s Rapoon? As a listener, Robin’s music was immediately interesting to me, because drone music as a genre was something I hadn’t yet heard. Soon, I became captivated by this conversation between sounds– samples interacting, some looped, others making unique or shorter appearances.

Technically, then, this was musique concrete– or largely that. It was also listenable– very “musical” in a traditional sense. Like with Zoviet France, Robin’s Rapoon tracks pulsed along with the best of the minimalists. They also showed me that world sounds and “Western” sounds could interact, and that beats did not have to be mathematically regular.

In creating new songs, Rapoon broke a lot of rules I thought existed for music. But this was done in such a compelling and pleasing way. I was very fortunate to collaborate with Robin briefly in the early…