There are many who swear by the 2005 second album from Berlin-based mostly-instrumentalists Rotor, and one can hardly argue. The German outfit got their start in 1998 — you might also see their name stylized as RotoR — and released their 2001 self-titled debut LP through Monster Zero Records, the same imprint that was home to concurrent offerings from the likes of Colour Haze, Astroqueen and Zerocharisma. By the time 2 showed up four years later, the then-three-piece had found a home on Elektrohasch Schallplatten, the label helmed by Colour Haze‘s Stefan Koglek, and they seemed at the same time to have found their niche in establishing a place for themselves between desert rock, classic progressive heavy, and an underlying touch of exploratory jamming. Their songs could crunch out along a riffy groove or dig into proggier vibes as they willed it, and though they released a split with Stonedudes and Drive by Shooting the same year through Nasoni Records that featured the track “V’Ger,” 2 remains an essential piece of their ongoing catalog and a look at how German heavy rock developed coming out of the post-Kyuss desert fixations of the late ’90s and ultimately found its own identity, which it did in no small part thanks to bands like Rotor.

They’ve never been big on lineup details, but at one point or another, the band was Marco Baale, Milan Pfützenreuter and Tim Mentzel. Today, they list their membership as “4,” which I guess is fair enough; their album 4 (review here) came out in 2010. In any case, compared to what they’d go on to do stylistically, perhaps the fare throughout 2 is a bit less complex, certainly less mature, but the tradeoff there is the kind of vibe that can only come from a band excited to be discovering who they are as players and as a group. Comprised of eight songs and running 43 minutes, Rotor‘s 2 is deceptive in both its immersion and its patience, and the band cleverly engage their audience with fuzzy tones and a sense of songcraft that builds off the no-nonsense approach of Karma to Burn but is decidedly their own. They’re an instrumental band, have always been known for being an instrumental band, and have not veered from that course, so naturally the first song on 2 has vocals. It’s one of two tracks to feature them, actually, with Samavayo‘s Behrang Alavi stepping in on lead cut “On the Run” and singing in Persian on the side B leadoff “Endlicht.”

This gives each half of the record not only a definitive starting point — i.e. “Endlicht” serving as a landmark to keep listeners from getting too lost in the proceedings as can sometimes happen in all-instrumental releases; sorry, the human brain is a simple thing and has evolved to hear words when they’re spoken — and seems to allow the band more space to play as they will in the subsequent three songs on each side. The energy of “On the Run” bleeds into the clever starts and stops and surges and pullbacks of “Auf Der Lauer,” which refuses for the better part of its five and a half minutes to resolve its mischievous bumps and bounces before finally doing so in a nodding roll and last crash, giving way to the interplay between jazz and thrust on “Supernovo” — a serene midsection offering a delightfully false sense of security — and side A closer “Nuhig Blut,” which begins with a warmth of tone to remind one that, indeed, Rotor were contemporaries of Colour Haze, and a winding progression of wah and rumbly bass that shoves forward at will into a roll that feels built off that in “Auf Der Lauer” but has even more nuance to offer as it goes, being part of the journey more than the destination as it is in the earlier cut.

As the side B launch and “On the Run” complement, “Endlicht” — the title translating to English as “Last Light” — features a return from Alavi and the aforementioned Persian lyrics. The guitar takes a Middle Eastern inflection to suit during the verses but opens to broader fuzz during the chorus, a flourish of psychedelia resulting that sets up some of the more ranging material still to come. “Endlicht” builds up, cuts out, builds again and recedes, in a quick barrage of changes, but the central energy remains, and turns over to the semi-acoustic, minute-long “Zeistau,” which I suppose is fair to call an interlude but rests well ahead of “Hellway”‘s more spacious course. It’s the penultimate piece, and its near-seven-minute runtime feels purposefully paired with the 7:31 closer “Kraftfeld” as the two seem to range more broadly from fuzz riffs to atmospherics. A more languid pace in the finale is welcome as well, as it shows Rotor working in a more patient sphere than they had up to that point with their songwriting. Following an improvised-feeling (if not actually improvised) midsection, there’s an uptick in tempo that drives into a quick, somewhat understated peak, and then finishes quietly enough to underscore the class of the performance on the whole.

Rotor‘s tenure on Elektrohasch resulted in two more studio albums, 2007’s 3 and the already-noted 4, as well as the 2011 live record, Festsaal Kreuzberg (review here), that was captured in their hometown. The five-year break between 4 and 2015’s Fünf (review here) was the longest of the band’s career, and it marked the beginning of their alliance with Noisolution that continued with 2018’s Sechs (review here) — both albums showcasing the progressive leanings that were very much present in Rotor‘s earlier work, as 2 shows across its span, but which were brought more into focus over time. With that album marking the 20th anniversary of the band, they set about stopping through various festivals and club shows to support, and of course had plans likewise for 2020 that includes Sonic Whip in the Netherlands, and Krach am Bach in Germany, both of which were called off. They’re set to appear at Esbjerg Fuzztival in Denmark next week, however, which as of now is still happening and has posted significantly detailed rules for social distancing. Whatever it takes, I guess.

I can only imagine seeing this band live during this time and engaging the deeply creative spirit of their work in-person. No doubt one would end up swearing by 2 as well as a representation of that time. As it stands these 15 years later, the prescience of Rotor is a prophecy self-fulfilled by the influence they’ve had on European heavy psych and instrumentalism — you can point to Truckfighters or Papir and I don’t think you’d be wrong in either case — and 2 not only holds up as a document of its era, but of the ability of the band to cast vivid images in the theater of the mind.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

This week sucked. Oh, it sucked. It sucked, it sucked, it sucked. The Pecan had a cold and was miserable — he’s still stuffy but has been better the last couple days, if you count periodically having epic breakdowns like your favorite early ’00s metalcore band and hauling off and smacking you as “better,” which actually, yes, I do — and The Patient Mrs.’ new semester started, all online so far, though they’re apparently going to reassess that in a couple weeks? And the dog. Ugh, the dog. The dog is fucking wretched. We were actually doing fine for a bit yesterday and I brought her out of the kitchen to play fetch in the living room. First thing she did was piss on the floor. Pretty much ruined my whole fucking day. Was on par with taking The Pecan to the zoo on Tuesday and watching him bite another kid on the playground (through his mask, but it was still enough to make the other kid cry). Oh, it sucked. All of it. Just awful. It was a shitty, shitty fucking week and the sooner it’s forgotten the better. I hope that by the next time I write about Rotor and inevitably come back to look at this post, I can’t even remember what I’m talking about here. “When was that?” and so on.

And so the dog chews my foot. Stop. So the dog chews the 200-year-old rocking chair my mother gave us when we had The Pecan. Stop. The dog chews a rug. Fine. She has bones. She has a kong. She has rawhide. She is awful. Fucking awful. And every time I try to talk to The Patient Mrs. about it it becomes an argument like she’s on team dog and I get to be my father the asshole (still dead, not yet buried for some fucking reason) who hates everything. Meanwhile, the dog bites. She chews. She pisses on the floor. She has a bark like a dying seal that is like sandpaper on my brain. I grew up with dogs. I have loved dogs my whole life. This is the dog we got our son so they could grow up together and it’s been five weeks and they can’t even be in the same room. It’s not working. The little voice in my head is telling me, “Punch out, Maverick.” Try again later.

And there’s nothing worse than not being heard.

I should go. I can hear The Pecan in the other room talking about hitting his trains, which means he’s frustrated about something and that’s not gonna stop. Yeah, now he’s biting himself and hitting himself.

Apparently we’re closing on the sale of this house (to us, from my mother) today? Never believe anything in real estate until a week after it’s happened, so I guess I’ll check in next Friday about that.

Great and safe weekend. No Gimme show today. Next week. Don’t forget to hydrate. So important.

FRM.

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Tags: 2, Berlin, Elektrohasch Schallplatten, Germany, Rotor, Rotor 2

This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2020 at 8:38 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.