Rafter - Quiet Storm (2011)

Up until now, Rafter Roberts has had a very playful experimentation in his music; I have compared him to a lot of sounds until I got to a formula that was 20% Chromeo, 20% Of Montreal, 20% Passion Pit and 40% Originality. If you already know Rafter’s work, you’ll know he’s cool, with swagger and pop sensibility; but that things that seemed part of his nature were dismissed for this LP, this time he goes straight up experimenting big time, the sounds are very Lo-Fi and the production has the idea of broken saturated noise.

The first two songs I was waiting for Rafter to come out, you can recognize the old stuff but hidden behind a bunch of noise and is until “Nothing Here Worth Stealing” (the third track) that it sinks in that this is not what you expected, the sound is very Lo-Fi, and is so repressed that the only thing coming through is noise with a washed dark metal guitar and sporadic acoustic pop overtones. For the track “Innocence, in a Sense” the guitar riff really gets heavy and tends to be a little bit flashier and 80’s like.

The reason, as Rafter himself explains, is that when touring around with the “Animal Feelings” promotion he kind of got into Metal; though this influence, still the songs conserve a little bit of his characteristic sound, but is so drowned and washed out by Lo-Fi effects that make each track very hard to digest. When asked about the record he said “we listened to a lot of black metal demo tapes in the car... it was really inspiring, extreme, blown out, ridiculous but heartfelt... I made this album, fed by those inspirations and a wave of existential freakout, human mind explosion. in my fantasy, it's like darkthrone meets the kinks meets lee perry...”.

The record is a little bit under 30 minutes and is so heavy that it gets actually really long, none of the songs are great for me, not even the ones that conserve more of what Rafter is all about, and keeping up with my composture, I guess I won’t talk about how disappointed I am of this record because I consider Rafter an amazing artist, and I’m not disappointed because he did different, in fact, I applaud the brave concept he pulls off. If something you get loud and clear from this album is that in fact a Quiet Storm of really epic proportions is happening.

But non the less the concept is well putted together, and you get that everything is intentionally, the reasons of the album are an artistic expression so closed to only Rafter’s understanding that even to his most loyal fans is hard to get, if something, this LP will open the door to new listeners and probably a lesson to not making expectations on his music but never giving up on it, because you never know what you can get, and this element of surprise can be risky, but I'm still waiting to see what next stuff he can come up to.

Still remembet that this is my opinion, and you can listen and make your own, so stream the LP in bandcamp down here and come to a conclusion.

Tracklist:

1. Convenience or Death
2. Fire Fire, Water Water
3. Nothing Here Worth Stealing
4. Innocence, in a Sense
5. Sick Princess
6. U Used Me Up
7. Interlude
8. Coldness of Space
9. Braden's Song
11. Oh No
10. Pummelled
12. Born Again

Rate: 3/10

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