If you didn’ know the back-story, the genre, the label or any other contextual information and just put Rodion G.A on – then it’s possible that your head might very well explode.
The music of Romanian producer Rodion Rosca, is both that good and that confounding, drawing influence from everything from prog, to komische to no wave music, more than likely without having heard any of the above. His sounds don’ so much redefine music, as consume and bastardise it into his own unique style.
In a retro futurist twist Rodion was making these sounds from behind the iron curtain, between 1978 and 1983. Whilst he used early synths, electric guitar, a bunch of self made pedals and primitive drum machines, his main compositional tools were reel-to-reel tape machines. There’ a real shrillness to some of the synth work here, and the percussion is stark and metronomic. Yet there’ something here that’s much more than the sum of its parts, a certain experimental inquisitiveness, where you get the sense that Rodion and his band were making it up as they went along – and loving it.
Not just raw, the music is dark, and the electronics are noisy, strange and psychedelic, at times feeling barely in control. This may be the reason that Rodion G.A only ever had two of their more rock orientated singles released, despite receiving both radio play and touring relentlessly. This is the bands lost material and it could’ve easily been made yesterday. It’s quite diverse, with everything from vocals to piano appearing between the flanged out electrics. It maintains a kind of militant minimalness, yet this primitive noisy electro pop music is endlessly engaging, demonstrating that just because the path wasn’ travelled, it doesn’ mean we shouldn’ be on it.
