Roedelius: Selbstportrait

Since I last featured a Roedelius album, nine days ago, I've read Stephen Iliffe's superb Painting with Sound: The Life and Music of Hans-Joachim Roedelius (mostly during an eleven-hour wait at Stansted Airport, having missed by plane thanks to a security snafu on the fifth anniversary of 9/11). So I'm a bit wiser now. For a start, I realise that album was a compilation that drew on solo works, so my comments about 'collective intent' were misplaced.

More importantly, Brian Eno, in his foreword to the book, gives a different perspective to my description of the music as 'utterly self-effacing'. "Discreet almost to the point of self-effacing, introspective almost to the point of hermeticism," Eno writes,"Roedelius' music nonetheless has a quiet intensity and conviction that burns stronger on repeated listenings." I possibly haven't got enough miles on the clock yet — despite having this album for over twenty years — but I can hear the authenticity that underpins these apparently slight instrumentals. The analogue synthesisers are resolutely unpolished. This is music that doesn't check in the mirror to see that its shirt is tucked in before it goes out; but neither does it cultivate that designer-dishevelled look. Take it as you find it.

Careful, now, I'm straying into criticism… I'm doubting my memory recall, too. I said before that I bought Begegnungen in a shop in Mill Road, Cambridge, but I think it might have been this one that I bought there (or possibly both). Certainly I remember coming across a clutch of Roedelius albums, many called Selbstportrait (there would have been four with this title then; now there are seven), and wondering whether to buy any or many of them. I ended up just getting Selbstportrait I (I believe I and II now come together on one CD: Stephen Iliffe gives them his top rating).

I really can't praise Stephen Iliffe's book highly enough. It has something for the Roedelius novice and for the aficionado. As he has produced over 60 albums in a music career that only started in his late 30s, few people can be familiar with it all.  Iliffe draws on several other critics and collaborators who have followed Roedelius's journey. But he also brings to bear a wide range of cultural references in his own in-depth appreciations of each album. The author is openly affectionate towards his subject (and has secured Roedelius's participation and blessing for the book), but he doesn't flinch from saying when the music is below par. The account is rarely pretentious, if occasionally repetitive. And the pictures are fantastic too. See the full details and order it direct. Along with Tim Mitchell's book about Jonathan Richman, also mentioned recently, this is the highest form of fan biography.

MusicBrainz entry for this album