Room Tone: Scanner

Robin Rimbaud, also known as Scanner, has been a fixture of British electronic music since the early 1990s. To launch Verdurin’s new series of critical listening sessions, Room Tone, a presentation of Rimbaud’s work will invite a response from music writer Tim Rutherford-Johnson.

Rimbaud’s 2017 album Fibolae occupies a special place in the musician’s extensive discography. The album advances his experimentation with a variety of equipment, instruments, and styles that has characterised his output for over three decades. 

Yet this eleven-track record stands out. Rimbaud originally received international attention for his reduced ambient music based on recordings of private telephone conversations. Created after a period of personal loss, Fibolae shifts between intimate and intense energetic moments that contrast with Rimbaud’s recognisable moods and textures.

Fibolae’s sonic world is made up of a more eclectic array of acoustic instruments, synthesisers, samples, and production techniques. It freely traverses idioms from pop to jazz and incorporates them in dense layers of sound. How does this approach to sourcing musical material lend itself to the making of a work that is — in contrast to the open ethos — both individual and singular?

Room Tone

Room Tone is a series of public critical listening sessions. Each event presents a recent musical work — a composition or album — in the presence of the artist, accompanied by a response from a critic. Room Tone invites the audience to share their listening experience and explore what defines contemporary musical practices.

While recorded and live music are more readily accessible than ever before, critical conversations about musical production are conspicuously rare in the public sphere. Room Tone invites those interested in the creation and reception of new music to reinvest the role of public criticism. By pairing musicians of multiple genres with critics practicing in different forms, Room Tone reactivates varied understandings of what and why composers and musicians are making and how it is heard.

Room Tone is convened by John-Robin Bold. It is produced with support from Hinrichsen Foundation. Album artwork by Anna Von Hauswolff.