Samuel Rohrer
Drums, Percussion, Electronics, Moog, Keys, Modular Synths

Samuel Rohrer released his first solo album Range of Regularity in 2017.
(„Unique, fascinating and mind-invigorating.“ – The Art Desk / „This is Rohrer’s first solo record, and it’s packed with ideas…it’s sublime.“-Resident Adviser / „Range Of Regularity truly traverses new territories.“ – London Jazz News).
Constructed almost entirely upon electronically-treated recordings of acoustic instrumentation, with a bare minimum of synthesizer voicing, this music vibrates with a compelling organicism – as if old-growth Black Forest trees had conspired together to make an album of ultra-modern improvisational music. Indeed, the record feels limned with contributions from some ‘other’ intelligence, despite being a clear extension of the fluid, percussion-driven musical technique that Rohrer has exhibited in previous years.
As an improvisatory sound pilot, he is able to elegantly navigate beats and anti-beats. He expands the world of rhythmic functions with his artistic, cross-style overall concept to include striking
emotional components. His percussion style flows with an implicit quality into his electronic arrangements, returns enriched with seductive energy and presents itself as the crucible where new possibilities are invited. He now sets out on his own, focussing on his solo work in the field of experimental acoustic/electronic music.

Samuel is one of the influential improvisational musicians of his generation and has toured worldwide, performing at major festivals like Punkt Festival, CTM Berlin, Nuits Sonores Lyon, NorthSea, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Portland Jazzfestival, Bergen Jazzfestival, Vancouver Int.Festival, Montréal International Jazz Festival, amo… Currently working on projects with Nils Petter Molvaer & Eivind Aarset, Ricardo Villalobos and AMBIQ, Jan Bang and Erik Honoré, Soundwalk Collective, Björn Meyer, Wolfert Brederode, Max Loderbauer, Stian Westerhus & Tobias Freund plus several others.
Furthermore he worked with Sidsel Endresen, Skuli Sverrisson, Mark Feldman, Laurie Anderson and Nan Goldin, just to name a few. He recorded several albums for ECM and created his own label Arjunamusic Records in 2012, where he develops and implements his idea of overlapping improvised music with an abstract form of electronic music and minimal techno.
Lately he is focusing on a live version of his solo project, where he uses acoustic drums blending into electronic percussive elements, where drum triggered synths create obscure sound-images, all based on free improvisation, evoking familiar rhythms and harmonic textures without ever stepping into the expected.  A true blending of acoustic and electronic sounds, which create together a multi tonal harmonic world through the combination of rich electro-acoustic overtones.

With ambiq, Max Loderbauer, Samuel Rohrer and Claudio Puntin form structures as earthy as they are flexible and, as a result, invent pioneering electro-acoustic soundscapes at the cutting edge of sound research.

 Simplicity is hard to do

With NOREIA the percussionist Samuel Rohrer is releasing his debut album under his own label arjunamusic. The Swiss musician, who has been living in Berlin since 2003, has become wellknown through his work with a wide range of artists, such as Wolfert Brederode, Colin Vallon, Malcolm Braff, Daniel Erdmann, Charles Gayle, Frank Möbus, Vincent Courtois, Markus Stockhausen and the singer Susanne Abbuehl. His creative collaborations have already been documented in numerous recordings under the prestigious label ECM amongst others.

Samuel Rohrer has in the meantime travelled far and become much sought-after as a musician. With his refined and well-rounded playing he never comes across as loud or dogmatic. Being in a band is what counts, and how the alert and sensitive presence of others helps him to achieve his flow. Ostentation, beating out patterns or insisting on well-rehearsed routines are all things that are foreign to him. He moves carefully in a rock-style groove, which he is constantly re-shaping and driving forward. In addition to his role as sideman, Samuel Rohrer has been writing his own music for some time. He works on tuneful songs without words in his head, turning them round and round until he senses they have acquired a life of their own – the one he always had in mind. His compositions shimmer between euphoric exuberance and melancholic contemplation. Anyone asking if this is rock, jazz or maybe new folk is probably missing the point.

In 2005 he released the beguiling album „nolia“ with clarinettist Claudio Puntin (Fred Frith, DaveLiebman, Hermeto Pascoal, World Clarinet Quartet) and double bassist Peter Herbert (Art Blakey’s, the Jazz Messengers, Vienna Art Orchestra, Steve Lacy, Paul Simon). Now Rohrer is taking the next natural step in the development of his music with his own label arjunamusic. To this end he invited the Icelandic composer and bassist living in New York, Skúli Sverrisson (Alas No Axis, Laurie Anderson, Jon Hassell, Arto Lindsey, David Sylvian) to the French studio La Buissonne as the fourth man in his quartet, creating a line-up which has produced a new and fascinating spectrum of sounds.

With his six-stringed baritone-bass Skúli Sverrisson provides a solid foundation, while at the same time opening doors to new possibilities. Closely enmeshed with Peter Herbert’s double bass, the pieces are earthed and the music is firmly grounded, while the style is relaxed. Claudio Puntin’s wonderful clarinet soars above, his silky, soulful melodic lines adapting themselves organically to the whole. This subtly balanced web of sound plays around Rohrer, and seems almost to ensnare him as he spins out the detail. The music is richly evocative, the harmonies conjuring up beautiful images in the mind of the listener. There is no splashing about in the shallows here. The sound is vigorous and energetic, dreamily atmospheric, and sumptuously bewitching. The mood of relaxed concentration during the recording is almost palpable. None of the players steps up as a soloist. What matters is the organic group sound, which is easy, almost casual, and it continually amazes and delights the listener with its new twists and turns. This music has an uncomplicated presence – a simplicity, which is hard to do.

NOREIA is the musical result of a new encounter between rock and jazz, and between composition and improvisation. Samuel Rohrer’s band deserves the best, because their music delivers pleasure without being undemanding, because it has something to say without overloading the listener, and because it reaches a place, without calculation, which is a new starting point.
This line-up, whose new album is named after the much worshipped Roman goddess, bringer of fortune, fertility and healing, promises to be one of the highlights of the live season wherever they are heard.
Ulrich Steinmetzger Translated by Jo Spearing

Jan Bang – vocals, live sampling, samples,
ac. piano, dictaphone
Erik Honoré – synthesizer, samples, synth bass,
voice, lyrics
Eivind Aarset – guitar, electronics, bass
Samuel Rohrer – drums, percussion, electronics, synths

Dark Star Safari, a newly formed group featuring Samuel Rohrer, Jan Bang, Erik Honoré and Eivind Aarset, present its eponymous recording debut, an evocative song-driven album. These songs conjure shadows of memory, clouds of dreaming and silhouettes of foreboding through the album’s layered, many-textured fabrics and Jan Bang’s silken delivery of Erik Honoré’s acute lyrics. Dark Star Safari is the work of four kindred spirits, their open modus operandi, and a remarkably interconnected creative nerve system. Key to their collaboration is an organic freedom that enables the music “to fill itself in”, to be self-actualizing via the musicians as medium. The music of the 10 songs resulted from a two-stage process: an initial phase of free flowing open improvisation, and a subsequent exploratory phase where hidden potentials were discovered and nurtured.
Born out of the spirit of open improvisation and the improvisational practice of the immediate live-remix, Dark Star Safari transcends both of these creative processes in a pursuit of fresh approaches to songwriting. Their music is now ready to meet the hearts, minds and bodies of live audiences, to evolve even further through that interaction.

Album Release on Mai 10 2019 on Arjunamusic Records

LEMURIA

Wolfert Brederode piano/electronics
Raphael Vanoli guit/electronics
Samuel Rohrer drums/synths

- More info coming soon