Rutger Hauser – The Swim

Adaadat / TUTL

Rutger Hauser‘s growth from their birth as an improv bass and drums duo in 2013 to the hydra-headed multimedia six-piece of 2019 has taken them from Lewisham in south London, where they were the unofficial house band of the Lumen Lake, to a point approximately 1,000 miles north, namely a community hall on the Faroe Islands. Here, over the course of a weekend, they attempted to synthesise that wild and rugged landscape into a series of quickly recorded improvised vignettes that run the gamut of hypnotic motorik groove to grinding cello-burned flutter and groan snapshots.

Disjointed drums and shrouded bass appear from behind you as things stretch and space warps ever so slightly. For an improv group, they dig rhythm and a steady path that allows for many an intersection from unlikely sources and directions, and when the cello draws near, the whole thing reverberates like a large truck passing too close to your house. A menagerie of sounds lurks in the undergrowth, the mewling of cats or the hissing of snakes. You never know what is going to come next and there is a sense that each member of the group quite likes keeping the others in the dark. It is fun to keep the rest of the band guessing, let alone the listener.

There is a cloudiness, a feeling of a world shrouded in mist, a sea mist that draws things closer, cuts off the horizon and inverts reality. Occasional glimpses of the open sea bring a throb to the heart, but found voices question your presence here. Interestingly, though the group is renowned for its improv leanings, they really know how to construct a song. From a blast of random sound manipulation, a rhythm will emerge, washed clean by the sea, sweet as rain with a chilling siren’s lament draped over the top. The accompanying cello is a haunted gauze, with dolphin smooth bass giving a friendly backdrop.

I would imagine few people reading this will have been to the Faroes, but that overwhelming sense of having the sea all around and everything it holds being that close to you is well presented here. The feeling of isolation, the lapping of waves that is not necessarily idyllic, but more elemental; a harbinger of something stronger. The cello is a force of nature here and the bass booms like the sea trapped in granite outcrops, bursting to escape, frustrated and surly, a roiling darkness that promises things unwanted.

There are patches where the sun appears, and the bass and drums urge a sinuous guitar pattern to break from the waves and head for the lighter clouds or chase dolphins though necklaces of spray; here the group is as one in a euphoric moment of rhythmic joy, a burst of motorik sunshine. Rutger Hauser can turn on a sixpence though, and some of the awkward tonality and distressed instrumentation reminds me of fellow south-eastern travellers Liberez. Towards the end, the weather closes back in again and sends us running for cover, a foghorn in the distance emitting a warning while cloud cover obscures the view once more; but the resonance of the island itself in all its elemental forms, trapped underfoot, shines with a magic that is beyond our understanding.

-Mr Olivetti-