The double LP ROUTE 2 consistently follows the sound worlds of the LP ROUTE 1, also released in 2022 on r-ecords.com. In doing so, Roland Schappert transfers ten new pieces of his special sound generation with often surprising twists into contexts that are only remotely reminiscent of familiar analog instruments or digital synthesizers. Short melody fragments, pointed tone sequences and rhythmic phrases in varied loops or unique are organically interwoven with each other.

With sparing means and careful dramaturgy, Schappert evokes different moods and counteracts their clarity with interpolations of abstract sensual sounds and their phenomena of dissolution. The tempos are often accelerating. But before intoxicating states set in, they are slowed down. Poetry, spoken aphorisms, is largely dispensed with this time. Only once, on side B in I LOVE YOU, do we hear Schappert's own, but heavily distorted voice. On side C, the spoken word piece DICH , which lasts less than a minute, evaporates between two longer rhythmic pieces like a small postscript. A current example of the fact that his digitally designed sound emotionality on the whole does not necessarily contain the expression of the overly sentimental. With this and all the other instrumental pieces Roland Schappert shakes up the listening habits of the listeners. He repeatedly questions common notions of harmony, but does not deny them; instead, in the electronic context, he simulates a fragile-seeming, in the end almost closed whole, without stimulating an overly trusting uniformity. The euphony that emerges again and again as a conciliatory commonality need not be unbroken; it can be thwarted by disparate structures, but it shimmers through.

Generally, rhythms lend a more regular shape to unformed sound matter above them. Rhythm brings particles into more orderly motion - it is the powerfully driving thing compared to the tones, tone sequences and chords of a melo. The close interweaving of both musical elements gives Roland Schappert's compositions their own structure, warmth, self-understanding and conciseness. In doing so, the musician works with the complete interconnection and intermixing of sound production. The carefully devised instrumentation does not separate rhythm and melos. Roland Schappert calls this "organic digitality" - indeed an unusual vocabulary, but one that seems to fit, especially since it refers to both the electroacoustic means and their effect. In the meantime, he has created an idiosyncratic musical structure and, along the way, an independent-sounding sound world that scratches at the edges of Western music history and is permeable with fluid transitions to contemporary club aesthetics and the composing avant-garde - with subtle allusions to yesterday as well as today.

In addition, he carefully experiments with his own field recordings and speech-technically modeled expressive possibilities. ROUTE 2 is based on an intensive process of creation, which is configured with the sound generation methods of wavetable and granular synthesis, among others. Physical modeling, another process, is also repeatedly used in Schappert's sound design.

All pieces were created November 2021 to April 2022. The album is even more stringent than the LP ROUTE 1, at the same time more demanding, with fewer changes, spirited and yet in many places remained picturesquely pictorial: Introspection, irrational? Reference points: A pinch of musique anecdotique at the end of the first piece entitled DARWIN and following it in DROHNT, which Luc Ferrari couldn't have done better. And the fulminant driving, almost march-like beat on FÄLLST MIR LEICHT, which brings back memories of 80s/90s systematics in the EBM (Electronic Body Music) environment. In addition, again some almost baroque keyboard sequences, taking up Schappert's idea of melos - as a form- and sound-dependent connection of specific tone sequences and rhythmic structures. Finally, the very last track on ROUTE 2 gets charmingly damp in the truest sense of the word: CAMPARI-SEKT is a true cocktail mix of sounds consisting exclusively of a swirl of ice pieces in a glass - both shaken electromagnetically and stirred accordingly. Organic digitality in the guise of a refreshingly cool minimalism.

Joachim Ody, May 2022