Stroom is one of the most compelling labels today. Why is that? I think it’s simply because they make impossible records. Impossible in the sense that they don’t follow any common market logic. Let’s take the latest release. There are four tracks on it. Two by Ron Boots, one each by Jo Bogaert and Morten Søndergaard. The first is a Dutchman, the second a Belgian, the third a Dane. The release has no title. We just call it after the tracks »Lachrymation / Ambient Kinsky / Sahara I Mine Hænder / Far Boundaries«. Because of a missing concept this release is not a compilation. The tracks don’t follow any specific zeitgeist, don’t stand for an epoch or scene. Well, they were all created between 1993 and 1996, but that’s where the similarity lies. Otherwise they are simply there. We only think them together when we get them curated as one product on this record. And that is the great achievement! Stroom themselves describe the music as »›linear‹, inward dance music«, whereby they already put »linear« in quotation marks themselves, and “dance music” would also deserve this signum citationis. Actually, this is Ambient. If you want, you can recognize a cinematic touch. Not only because »Ambient Kinsky« by Jo Bogaert, new beat apologists also known as Thomas de Quincey, plays with recordings by Klaus Kinski. (It’s also amusing that Kinski is misspelled here.) »Sahara I Mine Hænder« by Morten Søndergaard also plays with cinematic vocal fragments. The two twelve- and nine-minute-long Ron Boots pieces bear cinematic narratives in the composition itself. All in all a record that simply arouses curiosity.
Sofie Birch & Johan Carøe
Repair Techniques
STROOM~