R. Rebeiro – Unrendered Language [LP]

"Followers of Melbourne/Naarm-based musician R. Rebeiro will likely be familiar with his work as the drummer in the influential minimalist noise-rock trio My Disco, his contributions to groups like HTRK, and his expansive output as a collaborator and organiser in the Melbourne scene. 'Unrendered Language,' Rebeiro's new solo album, represents the most comprehensive manifestation yet of the artist's ability to craft abstract percussive realms. Lyrical deluges of beats, thuds, and clangs in varying pitches and timbres are set within vast electro-acoustic ambiances, manipulations, and distortions. The resulting pieces have a cavernous, dreamlike quality that maintains a sensation of floating unreality, being simultaneously organic yet interspersed with hallucinatory and synthetic elements.

Rebeiro's rhythmic sensibility is equally informed by free improvisation, minimal electronics, and avant-garde composition. There's an austerity and discipline to these works that evokes Eddie Prevost’s materialist explorations with AMM and other ensembles, the starkly hypnotic pulses of Pansonic, and the evolving densities in Xenakis' percussion compositions. Comparisons can also be drawn to contemporaries like Will Guthrie, with whom Rebeiro shares a post-industrial sensibility, and cajón improviser Laura Robles, where the touch of the artist—skin against surface—is as palpable as the sounds produced. At the same time, 'Unrendered Language' possesses a field-recording-like character, as if the percussive elements are animated by natural forces, grinding and converging in turbulent waters or rustling in vigorous winds. This ambiguous interplay between human and elemental forces imbues 'Unrendered Language' with a beguiling and seductive quality that intensifies with each repeated listen.

- Joel Stern"

Downwards, 2024