Hans-Joachim Roedelius / Tim Story / Christopher Chaplin (live at Café OTO)

London
28 July 2023

I’m here at the wonderful Café OTO on the second night of a three-day residency by the legend that is Hans-Joachim Roedelius and a rare opportunity for the man to explore different facets of his music over a long weekend.

Roedelius is now eighty-eight years old and has had a fifty-four-year career in music, starting with the formation of Kluster in 1969 (who later changed their name to Cluster). He then ventured in to the more soporific tones of slightly more ambient sounds with Harmonia, which then lead him to recording three albums with Brian Eno in the mid-seventies. Since then, he has released dozens of solo albums and many collaborations, including one with former Japan keyboard player Richard Barbieri.

Tonight, Roedelius plays two sets; the first is with Christopher Chaplin and deals with the more electronic ambient sounds that the maestro produces. Both huddled over laptops with pads at either side to trigger and play sounds, Roedelius gives the audience a cheery “hello” and settles down behind his desk, with a grand piano on his left-hand side. There is a wash of white noise and various synthetic bleeps. Warm synth pads take over and echoing bird sounds fills the air. Chaplin plays some haunting melodies while Roedelius concentrates more on atmospherics and layering ambient sounds over one another.

At points the music gets a steady rhythm going, but this is still soft and genteel as sounds rise and fall like waves on a beach. Music bubbles up and Roedelius plays a few sustained notes on the piano, suddenly taking the sound somewhere quite different and making the piece almost Harold Budd-like. Within a few moments he is back behind the laptop, manipulating sounds again. After about twenty-five minutes the music drifts off into the hemisphere and comes to an end. The audience gives rapturous applause in hope there will be more, but the two men simply nod at each other and stand up from behind their workstations.

There is a short break before Roedelius returns to the stage with Tim Story and both men sit on two stalls at the grand piano; tonight they will be playing sections from the 2022 album 4 Hands, the first time any of it has been played here in the UK. Roedelius plays arpeggios at the lower notes on the piano while Story plays lilting melodies at the higher end. They inform us that the album was created on the same piano, but with each of them in the studio at different times. The music is beautiful and soothing, like a mixture of the piano work of Erik Satie, Claude Debussy and Philip Glass all blended together.

After one track, Roedelius jokes that “Brian Eno used to call me the best human sequencer” and his playing of these type of rhythms is still immaculate. The pieces are all wonderful and at times moving; they play with a melancholy type of atmosphere and the sound of stillness on a warm summer’s afternoon. The interaction between the two artists is a joy to behold and they obviously are enjoying each other’s company as well as playing.

After a few pieces, Story leaves the stage to let Roedelius beguile us with a solo track on the piano. The piece is full of scuttling melodies that blend together effortlessly to make an incredible whole that had an essence of sadness about it, as well as having small apotheoses at times. More applause and cheering greets the man as he lets the final note hang in the air.

He then moves back behind the computer, saying “There is something I want you all to hear”. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to be able to find the piece or the sound he is looking for and after about five minutes or so gives up and announces the end of the performance for tonight. I’m sure most of us would have liked to have heard another piano piece, but that wasn’t to be.

Let’s hope that Roedelius can return to these shores again and entrance us with another residency at Café OTO so we can enjoy his beautiful melodies live one more time.

-Gary Parsons-