Last year, Roger Smith, a.k.a. Chefkirk release, got into my CD player on three different occasions. I don’t know if I gave him all the credit he deserved because two were collaborations. So, this is the first time I’ve heard a full-length (70 minutes) release by Roger Solo. “Giant Size” was recorded over 17 months, so it’s not a quick ‘oh, lemme do some things and record it’. This one took time, and it shows.
As with some of the other material I’ve heard, there are moments of incoherent noise (yet it’ll probably be very coherent) and moments of rhythm that are not. I tend to speak about structures, recurrences or patterns in those cases. Rhythms are, for me, danceable in some way; structures don’t have to be. There are several moments when Chefkirk’s music has these structures, and I have grown quite fond of them. Side note: I have listened to this album more than once because it’s not ‘easy’ music. Listening more often will open up these compositions. The layering is intense; the tracks are very much telling stories, and the used sounds are constantly evolving. This is in no way a release that you should play once and shelve somewhere.
But being the reviewer, I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. I would love to write more about what I’m hearing because it intrigues me. And on the other hand, I don’t know what to write because it’s on a different level of complexity than what I’m used to. So I’m choosing the easy way out and just say that my favourite track is “Ruined for Days”. It’s what I have been since listening …
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