Sometimes the most important things happen in passing. Sidequest by Roundabout feels like a map on which the paths only emerge as you walk them: little sketches of bass lines, snippets of saxophone, shifted keyboard chords that sometimes stretch in the direction of memory, sometimes in the direction of departure. Nothing here seems ready-made – and that is what makes it so appealing. Between half-lived nights, improvised dormitories and the shimmering tiredness of civil service or university life, Manú Kreutzer, Moritz Lindner, Henrik Stöllinger and Alexander Danninger unfold a sound that does not seek a fixed place, but always remains in motion.
Sometimes it sounds like the flickering of a thought that disappears almost too quickly, sometimes like a place where you linger for a surprisingly long time. The guitar line of Jamie Leeming (Alpha Mist) on »Torino 06« opens such a window – somewhere between smoky melancholy and the feeling that there might be more to come. Sidequest is not a search for a goal. It is a waiting, a moving on, a brief moment of being lost – not as a tragedy, but as a possibility. A musical reflection on a friendship that simply stops in the middle of an improvised roundabout and says: right here.
Sidequest
