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Robert Schroeder — Into the Light
(Spheric Music SMCD-2045, 2023, CD)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2023-09-12

Into the Light Cover art

With close to fifty full length releases to his credit since his 1979 debut, Robert Schroeder is a consummate composer and musician who’s showing no signs of running out of steam anytime soon. Put the man in front of a battery of synthesizers, give him a few months to work his ideas into form, and a new recording will surely find its way to release. Only a short gap of a few years exists whilst Schroeder switched from News / Racket Records / Innovative Communications to his current label Spheric Music in the early 2000s, where no recordings were released, though I’m sure he was busy during that period dreaming up new ideas for future release. Whatever can be done with synthesizers, sequencers, samplers, and electronics, driven by a strong drive for melodic fortitude and dramatic arrangements that shift effortlessly as they proceed through each of the seven pieces on Into the Light, they most certainly will. The opening title track spans over twelve minutes of ever-changing ideas that immerse the listener in a sea of melodies, textures and rhytnms, revolving and driving forward with colorful intensity, shifting waves of emotion as it proceeds. There is one annoying part where some sampled whispered voices are shoehorned into the mix, but it doesn’t last more than about a minute, and besides, Schroeder seems to do that somewhere on every album. “Enlightment” offers some very interesting sounds as it ramps up and takes shape over its duration, eventually finding the more familiar synth sounds that are a staple of his oeuvre. Samples of a busy street, footsteps, birds, waves, and muted spoken voices open the eleven minute “Traffic Beach,” eventually finding a groove of spatial melodics and gentle percussives, quite reminiscent of the late great Klaus Schulze. While one could say that Into the Light doesn’t deviate much from the style of his last few releases, he still has plenty of fresh ideas within that soundworld left to explore.

Filed under: New releases, 2023 releases

Related artist(s): Robert Schroeder

More info
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llF_XaTHvkU
http://www.sphericmusic-shop.de/neue/into-the-light.htm

 

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