Ambient artist & composer Tom Rogerson shares single ‘Toumani

By Simon Anders

On March 15, 2022

In News

Composer & ambient artist Tom Rogerson

shares new track ‘Toumani’

New album

Retreat To Bliss

Out March 25th via Western Vinyl

Listen

“Elegant and exquisitely drifting” MOJO“Both mournful and dazzlingly optimistic, a taste of the conflict found so often in nature and reflected so elegantly across the course of the record.” The Line of Best Fit“A meeting of minds that is full of rewarding surprises, challenging and surprising one another, and their listeners, with music that feels alive and wondrous…” Pitchfork “Retreat To Bliss is a perfectly apt name for this collection of relaxing, occasionally haunting songs.”Composer Magazine

Today, composer and ambient artist Tom Rogerson has released new single ‘Toumani’ from his forthcoming album, Retreat To Bliss. Since the release of his last album – 2017’s Finding Shore on Dead Oceans, a collaboration with Brian Eno – Tom Rogerson’s life has undergone a number of dramatic transformations. While writing Retreat to Bliss, Rogerson had a child, lost a parent, and received his own diagnosis of a rare form of blood cancer. The new decade brought him from Berlin to the Suffolk of his childhood, composing profound pieces of minimal songwriting in the church next to his parents’ home.

Talking about the track, Rogerson said: “Named after Toumani Diabate the wonderful Malian kora player, who I got heavily into about 7 years ago just as I was starting to think about how to make solo piano music in a more disciplined way than pure improvisation. There’s something about the accompaniment and then free-flowing melody that he often uses that really appealed to me, as well as the density of some of the textures on that instrument. I thought it would be interesting to imitate that to see where it took me, how it would sound on a piano, and this was one of the pieces I ended up with. I say pieces, but it’s still very free: the only set material is the first few bars. ”

Rogerson studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music under mentors like Harrison Birtwistle, and he made his live debut as an improvising pianist in 2002, before releasing an improvised record with Reid Anderson (Bad Plus) and Mike Lewis (Happy Apple, Bon Iver) in 2004. He formed the band Three Trapped Tigers in 2007, expertly blending elements of electronic, jazz and noise rock into a cohesive whole. The band earned a reputation for innovative live shows and went on to perform and collaborate with artists like Brian Eno, Deftones, and the Dillinger Escape Plan. It was working with Eno, another Suffolk native, that eventually led Rogerson back to his roots and back to a place where he could write Retreat to Bliss, his solo debut album announced for a March 25th release on Western Vinyl.

“All my life, the piano has been my constant companion, my confessor, my best friend, and my worst enemy,” Rogerson explains. “I’ve always written music on and for the piano, but it felt too personal, too private to release.”

Indeed, listening to Retreat to Bliss feels almost like eavesdropping, as though you’re crouched in the belfry of a Suffolk church, bearing witness to a form of musical bloodletting. For the first time in his noteworthy career, Rogerson has combined masterful piano playing and subtle electronics with the texture of his own voice, an attempt to express deeply private emotions that were difficult to articulate using instrumental music alone.

Rogerson gives some background on the track: “I was in the middle of a few months where lots of big life events were happening and I wrote lots of things very quickly, having spent years struggling to do anything at all. It was the first sustained period of working by myself with no one else to bounce ideas off, and I instinctively started singing a bit more seriously – I even started using a vocal mic! The whole thing including lyrics was new for me but felt like a necessary response to the mood I was in.”

The eleven tracks that make up Retreat to Bliss were recorded by Leo Abrahams (Brian Eno, David Byrne, Grace Jones) over the course of just a few days, a process that emphasized spontaneity and the artist’s own commitment to improvisation.

“The last few years have brought some struggle, some joy, and a lot of change. My response has been to retreat to what I trust the most: the piano, my voice, and the landscape I grew up in. That’s how the album got its title, and how I came to be ready finally to release a solo record,” he adds.

Secular yet devotional, intensely personal yet profound, the experience of listening to Retreat to Bliss seems to evade characterisation. It’s physical and emotional, a glimpse into the mind of an artist who has chosen exposure over withdrawal, who uses his command of the piano to chart an unflinching path forward, never looking back.