*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* "There is a particular approach to improvisation which can seem slightly strange when you first encounter it, although it's been around in free improv at least since the days of the AACM, and so probably since free improv existed at all. This approach finds a commonality with field recordings of "exotic" musics rather than with the studio, and seeks, one way or another, to embrace that commonality in a non-contradictory way.

Rohstoff represent one way of doing this. Most of their CD was recorded outside, in quite noisy environments and without sophisticated equipment. Although some are recognisable and familiar, most of the instruments sound either exotic or home-made. Vocal outbursts are common, too, and what with the group's tendency towards occasional pulsed rhythms and melodic-harmonic "riffs" one is rather strongly reminded of the music of the poorest and most isolated parts of West Africa. There is a sense that this music is supposed to be part of an environment both natural and, as it turns out, technological, as a railway station tannoy locates this apparently rural music in an urban setting, indeed in one of Europe's cultural centres.

This, then, is a long way from mere ethno-forgery or any attempt to reach for some authentic, "natural" way of making music. This is music which is often funny and sometimes perverse -- take the completely incongruous eleventh track, a skewed acid jazz pastiche which bears no relation to anything else on the disk, or its successor: "put you CD player on repeat", says the liner, but the effect is just that you hear the same, perfectly complete piece over and over again. Bizarrely compelling, these recordings dig down into something conceptually very deep in the free improv tradition, but they're musically lively enough to be much more than just ideas. The Copenhagen scene is a rich one, and the arrival of new label Intuitive to document it is most welcome." - Richard Cochrane