Nein Rodere - Form & Feeling

Under the Nein Rodere nom-de-plume, Berlin-based musician David Roeder has hardly dipped from view since first making himself known to us with the self-released Catch Up With Social cassette in 2020, releasing another two tapes and an LP in the time since, and even gracing us with a performance at World of Echo's fourth birthday in November last year as well as featuring on the compilation that event twinned as a celebration of. Form & Feeling is his second (or third?) 'album', though the chronological lineage is less significant than the evolution this collection of songs represents. Roeder often writes in a sketch-like, diaristic manner, tracks varying in length, form and fidelity (though ostensibly very much of the 'lo-' variety). Form & Feeling by no means abandons that approach, but it does feel like a more - dare i say - coherent presentation for Roeder. I'm not entirely sure why 'coherence' is so widely revered in music discourse, for the irregular and the ramshackle are just as legitimate forms of expression as consistency - perhaps we've a collective desire for some kind of order? Let's say, then, that what Roeder is working towards here is the forging of a sensibility, one that allows him to explore various whims and diverse tangents while still being in service to a greater whole. Horn of Plenty's reference to both Jim Shepard and Dean Blunt seems to fit this understanding, though i'd also factor in early Smog and Robert Pollard, all artists unafraid to indulge a digression (or two) but always able to circle back to their own defined centre. Nein Rodere seems to work to that same principle, whereby the dulcet tones of his voice, some erudite lyricism and a close mic-d guitar that wanders between the melodic and the dissonant are tools enough to express something that end up being broad enough to satisfy an ever enquiring mind and the anchor to which the listener can hold. The best thing is that it's an approach that opens up endless possibles. For now, Form & Feeling is its best manifestation yet.  ed by the raw and exposed means by which they were pointedly laid to tape.