[K&K 23] Rouilleux - Zugzwang

[K&K 23] Rouilleux - Zugzwang

In the beginning there were Rouilleux’s solitary songs, only heard by a few closest friends, and never leaving the tightly bordered space of author’s home – there was a silence. The change came in 2008 when, out of an impulse from outside and basically ad hoc (as a support band for a Kayo Dot show in Prague), the band named The Ruin of Ruins was founded and his songs were accompanied by noise-improvisational trio RUiNU. The Ruin of Ruins existed as an occasional unit for a year and a half and then made way for more organic collaboration with k!amm under the name No Pavarotti. In the meantime Rouilleux played his first solo show (in Studio Rubín in Prague, with Head of Wantastiquet). As there never was much space for fulfilling his undeniable compositional and text-writing skills in the mostly improvised psychedelic rituals of No Pavarotti, the solo record had to come: to reveal what has remained hidden for years, first in the quiet seclusion of room and then in the noise of The Ruin of Ruins.

Zugzwang consists of 8 pieces with total time nearing 45 minutes, mixed and mastered by Jorge Boehringer (Core of the Coalman).  It is being released on KLaNGundKRaCH and Letmo Productions labels in limited edition of 300 CDs; the printed medium is set in luxury hand-made digipack. Regarding the content, as much as it’s true that in the beginning of Rouilleux’s road there were songs, it has to be said that in the end there is sound: full, vibrating and spilling out everywhere. The record is instrumentally based on guitar layers (moderately accompanied by electronics, drums or chimes), sometimes dense and impervious, interwoven with feedback, sometimes the distorted sound mass recedes to reveal a subtle ambient haze, and from time to time even more traditional rock riffs can be heard, although more blurry than is common. Equally important part is Rouilleux’s vocal, lone and multiplied, covering wide range of positions between whispering and roaring. Atmosphere fluctuates between psychedelic folk, guitar noise and post-rock, and it seems as if the whole album is poised between two movements: going forward (linearity of the songs) and a motion resembling random swarming of microscopic particles in fluid (a rhizomatic character of the sound).

The title of the record is a chess term describing a situation when it’s inconvenient for a player to make a move. Maybe everything would be easier and more comfortable for Rouilleux if he wasn’t forced to come out of silence and make a sound in the space which no longer belongs only to himself. In any case, what was already sounded cannot be taken back, just as well as is impossible to pretend that it doesn’t exist. It is here, close and distant at the same time, impassively tossed out and yet relentlessly demanding attention… Rouilleux, Zugzwang.
 
Rouilleux: Zugzwang

  1. Over (4:19)
  2. Sailings (7:18)
  3. Nay I (7:18)
  4. Nay II (4:03)
  5. Cascando (5:15)
  6. Un Lac (4:31)
  7. Zugzwang (6:31)
  8. Courtship (3:01)

Links

rouilleux.net
music.rouilleux.net
klangundkrach.net
letmo.net/productions