Roman Rofalski - Fractal (2024)

On Fractal, Roman Rofalski takes the harmonically rich & resonant sounds of a classical grand piano and slams them hard into a dark, urgent, and uneasily digital place. Like a detective novel that suggests tense and unusual situations, Fractal takes a Schimmel K280 grand piano with its totally refined sound and synthesises sporadic piano clusters with deep electronic and rhythmic energy. The product of brief but intense studio recordings, Rofalski took his prepared piano tracks away and, in his own words “tore the sounds apart”, editing and engineering his beautiful piano flourishes with the aid of multiple plug-ins, loops, cuts and re-samples.

The record opens with “Perpetuum”, featuring drums by Felix Schlarmann (Amsterdam). The piano is poised, high above dramatic rumbles and edgy percussion, seeking resolution but finding it nowhere. Like a storm hinting at murderous days to come, the noir opener sets the tone of this infinitely mobile record. “Bass Resonance”, derived from single prepared-piano notes, with occasional sustain and distorted harmonics, is nevertheless grounded by a deep groove. Like light filtering through an anonymous hotel-room window, this track flickers into “Slow Fox”, a crunchy, icy track that stays mainly with the piano, but a piano on another planet, mashed through multiple signals with smatterings of violence (yoga blocks paradoxically pitted against strings!).

“Fractal Waves” sinks further into dark fields, perhaps, in Rofalski’s own words, the deepest and most compositionally complex. Here live piano mingle with piano samples in a digital haze. Patterns pulse in and out, generating a sense of unease: the case is still on, and danger is never far away. The resulting indeterminate analogue-digital haze points to an uncertain world, repetitious but taking a dark path. As the classical piano trembles at the edges, a new and macabre dance comes to the forefront. Next track, “Calum” turns the relationship between piano and electronics around.

Inspired by Mark Fell and computer musician Calum Gunn, here Rofalski uses the piano to mimic the sounds Ableton can make, performing smooth ritardandi organically, but creating the impression of a grid performing itself. “Opsi” is a celestial meditation; merging the harmonics of the grand piano with cosmic dark matter. Single chord spirals out into galaxies where no one can hear you extemporise. Final track, “Bumper”, is an elegiac rattle that merges analogue with digital so that the signals are crossed and blurred into a new harmonic dimension.

Roflaski was inspired by, among other artists, Andy Stott, Craig Taborns and Tim Hecker, particularly the record Virgins. Fractal was obscurely influenced by Pierre Boulez’s Derive and Morton Feldman’s Routine Investigations, and Rofalski situates himself in the anti-tradition of neoclassical and free jazz experimentation, alongside Schlippenbach and Cecil Taylor, but also keeps company with Klaus Schulze and Karlheinz Stockhausen.