Kalabrese Continues On His Love Rumble

Continuing on his strange obsession with the word “rumpel”, Zurich’s maverick post-house producer Kalabrese releases his follow-up to last year’s “Let Love Rumpel Vol 1” album. Available now via Rumpelmusig, it is inevitably called “Let Love Rumpel Vol 2”.  

Reviewing his first solo album, “Rumpelzirkus”, after quitting his gig as the drummer of the hip-hop band Sendak, Pitchfork called him “minimal house’s first great defector since Matthew Herbert” and awarded the album a very fine 8.4 rating. This was in 2007. Since then, Kalabrese has single-mindedly stuck to these roots, including the word “rumpel”: whilst it is generally taken to mean “rumble” in Swiss German, a German German dictionary lists as synonyms words like “clutter”, “rubbish”, and, bafflingly, “washboard”. Whatever the meaning, it clearly points towards a superior if somewhat surreal sense of humour.

But what about the music? Repetitive and minimal the grooves might be, “Let Love Rumpel Vol 2” certainly isn’t boring, even when it is consumed far away from a dance floor, on the sofa at home. Kalabrese’s grooves constantly change shape even when it does not immediately appear so. They bubble and simmer in an endlessly entertaining sequence of unexpected twists and turns. Added to this constantly moving backdrop are unusual organic extras like brass, percussion, e-piano or marimba. And then there’s the laconic vocals delivered sometimes in Swiss German, sometimes in English, and provided either by Kalabrese himself or guests like Deacon Blues, KAYYAK, Zoé Miku and Palma Ada. Excellent stuff all round.

Kalabrese