Robert Schroeder – New frequencies vol.1

4 reviews for Robert Schroeder – New frequencies vol.1

1. 

   Robbert Schuller / iO Pages magazine – 2022-11-22

   Als synthesizerspeler van de tweede generatie klopte Robert Schroeder uit Aachen in 1979 met z’n album Harmonic Ascendent voor het eerst aan de deur van de ‘kosmische muziek’. In de daaropvolgende jaren werd hij geholpen door legende Klaus Schulze en diens IC-label.
   Commercieel succes was er met het project Double Fantasy in 1986. Na een creatieve dip van 7 jaar is de man sinds een tijdje weer druk aan het releasen.

   Dit album is er een uit wat een serie moet worden waarin Robert het terrein van chill out en downtempo (dans)muziek verkent. De ritmes zijn dus prominenter aanwezig dan op de reguliere solowerken. Een en ander is gelikt geproduceerd en klinkt prima, maar toch ook wel wat spanningsloos. Neem opener Rhythm Dancer; een perfecte soundtrack voor een klus-, tuinier- of lifestyle-programma op de TV ‘s zondags namiddag. Hippe muzakjes derhalve, die wel heel makkelijk door de gehoorgangen vliegen. Gelukkig wordt het wat meer gekruid in de tweede helft van het album waar Schroeder iets meer experimenteert en ook soleert.
   Het donkergetinte A Night In Space is met ruim acht minuten het langste nummer en triggert de luisteraar meer. De twee laatste titels hebben ondanks een vet aangezette beat meer ‘bite’ dan de rest van het materiaal, en vallen daardoor bij mij beter in de smaak.

   2010. Robbert Schuller / iO Pages magazine

2. 

   Mike Richards / U.K. – 2022-11-22

   Robert Schroeder fans are definitely getting spoiled, with this third release in just over a year. This time, it’s a collection of up-tempo and extremely well-crafted tracks. There’s beats, drums, sequencers, samples, some great synth solos (especially as the album progresses) all gelled together with a rich 24 bit production. The way he incorporates the brilliant Mellotron choir into his modern music is amazing.

   An excellent, well-composed and produced album.

   2010. Mike Richards / U.K.

3. 

   Sylvain Lupari / Guts Of Darkness – 2022-11-22

   Robert Schroeder has the merit of always keep his public on alert. Album after album, and this since his 2005 comeback with Brainchips, the German synthesist disconcerts his fans by producing avant-gardism releases. Albums, I think in particular of Sphereware and Taste It, where Schroeder explores and innovates its musical creations traced from new technologies, but while respecting its paths musical who, needs to remember, always rocked between the Synth-Pop (Double Fantasy) and a EM as well sequenced as cosmic. Entirely made with Propellerhead REASON software New Frequencies Vol. I, Robert Schroeder investigates the world of virtual keyboards with PCs, shaping a musical world that goes beyond sonorities boundaries that Schroeder created until today. Voted as the best album in Audiophile Pop category, New Frequencies Vol. I is the first of albums series, contrary to the D.MO, where Robert Schroeder pushes his musical explorations out of conventional Space Rock limits, diving into Space Synth-Pop, with an album filled of ambivalent rhythms, but amazedly powerful, with solid percussions, subtle and strange voices samplers, as well as synth to hybrid and still wrapping surges but a lesser cosmic.

   Rhythm Dancer opens this Schroeder 21st opus at great start with synthesized waves which hem in loops on a liven rhythmic and slightly rattlesnakes sounding percussions where digital sound effects are multiplying, faithful to sounds multiplicity that reigns in the complex musical universe of Schroeder. The rhythm is ambiguity and explores various structures on hatched keyboards keys, howling of synth and avalanches of drums which break out on a cadence already well fed in tones.
   The Reason Why offers a more chipped structure on synths to sinuous waves and jazzy tones. A title which floats in a very dense synthesized envelope, but of which the rhythm is constant and supported by a good line of bass and sequences which pulse heavily on tablas percussions Earth, Wind and Fire alike synths.
   I Like It explodes from its opening with a rhythmic to rattlesnakes extremities and a synth of which metallic strata shell his cosmic and psychedelic elements beneath suave voices sampling. Here, as on the whole album, the synth is dense and extremely varied, diversified in tones of all kinds, but remains so dreamlike with smooth waltzing strata. We are far from a cosmic EM with sequences which develop slowly.
   Everything on New Frequencies Vol. I swarms of a livened up and groovy musical life, like Twitter my Mind and its slower rhythm, notches by hip-hop or break-dance disc scratches, good and loud percussions on a synth to ethereal strata that waltz in spite of a cosmos dogged between the dream and the reality of dance floors, quite as From Heart to Hearth whom on the other hand offers a more tangent cosmic than Twitter my Mind.
   Falling Down is a small jewel of rhythmic duality with a synth which spins in loop on a heavy tempo of wave-like resonances and where the hybrid cadence is crowned of heterogeneous tones which hammer an already complex tempo. Some groove in a cave with a star-studded ceiling and cosmic draughts. A splendid track that sticks to the ears on the first listening quite as the superb Caribbean Nights and its tempo fed of heavy resonances and of good innovative percussions.
   The sound experiments on indecisive and hybrid cadences continue with the enigmatic I Feel so Good and percussions which imitate the call of ducks and its synth to frenzies unwinding of old hippies still on acid.
   A Night in Space is the only unctuous moment of New Frequencies Vol. I. And still there, even suave and languishing movement is filled with a rich and experimental sound fauna, making of A Night in Space one night which is really cosmic and dreamlike with its layers of synth which coil up such of anorexic hoops which cook up under metallic percussions, in the shade of sulfurous solo of a melancholic synth.
   An automated voice stammers a robotics text on RockNtronic opening. The tempo falls. He is heavy, sinuous and slightly syncopated, taking more forms and strengths as he investigates the hidden recesses of its structure which remains always ambivalent between its synthesized captivating strata, its synth to incisive solos and its heavy percussions. Oxidation concludes on an undulating rhythm, a little as on Rhythm Dancer, but with eroded reverberations which circulate in loops, in the shade of juicy synth solos.

   Between Moonbooters progressive Synth-Pop and Art of Noise abstract originalities; Robert Schroeder pilots a sound sea to externalities very different from EM of Berlin School style. Sounds, powerful, incisive, chipped, syncopated and twisted sounds! In short, a sound range of the most complex, punchy and printed by originality which couples to beautiful melodies, among them the superb A Night in Space and others tracks where nervous structures and bouncy beats abound of beautiful ambient and wrapping strata, creating a surprising and charming duality.

   2010. Sylvain Lupari / Guts Of Darkness

4. 

   Bert Strolenberg / Sonicimmersion – 2022-11-22

   The flow of Schroeder-releases is still strong, as February 2010 brings us New Frequencies Vol. 1″ after two other albums in the previous year.

   This studio project