Roll The Dice
Audio
-
1. See You Monday
-
2. Calling All Workers
Biography
Stockholm’s Roll The Dice defy easy categorisation, conjuring up synth landscapes that hark back to early electrnic sounds as much as they look forward into an unsettled future. The duo of Peder Mannerfelt, member of Fever Ray and solo performer The Subliminal Kid, and Malcolm Pardon, film and TV composer, began recording music together after several years sharing studio space in their home city. Over the next two years they gradually pieced together their self-titled debut album (released by the US Digitalis label in 2010), whose haunted atmospheres gained the duo fans in Kieran Hebden (Four Tet), Caribou and Fuck Buttons among others, and earned them a place in end-of-year lists by tastemakers Phonica and Boomkat.
Roll The Dice's music tells stories. What sets them apart from many of their contemporaries is their attention to narrative detail: where other electronic musicians write insular tracks, Pardon and Mannerfelt write entire albums, each piece an intrinsic component of the whole. Their 2011 album (and first for The Leaf Label), In Dust, is a perfect example of that approach.
The handful of shows Roll The Dice played in 2010 – including Poland’s Unsound Festival, Brazil’s Rojo Nova and Sweden’s Full Pull and Volt - proved them to be equally unique live performers. Rather than allowing themselves to get caught up in the increasingly stale ‘two-guys-and-two-laptops’ mode, they use only analogue gear, keeping the human element present and allowing space for improvisation, with a strong visual presence. The results are captured in the duo’s Live In Gothenburg EP, released through Leaf in early 2011. Their first live performance of the year came at the monster Roskilde festival in July, a hint of things to come.
At a time when electronic musicians have once again fallen for the charms of the analogue synthesizer, its grainy textures and tactile nature, Roll The Dice are far from the only group exploring these sonic spaces. But by focusing on the stories they tell, Pardon and Mannerfelt use past instruments to forge new paths into the future.
Biography
Stockholm’s Roll The Dice defy easy categorisation, conjuring up synth landscapes that hark back to early electrnic sounds as much as they look forward into an unsettled future. The duo of Peder Mannerfelt, member of Fever Ray and solo performer The Subliminal Kid, and Malcolm Pardon, film and TV composer, began recording music together after several years sharing studio space in their home city. Over the next two years they gradually pieced together their self-titled debut album (released by the US Digitalis label in 2010), whose haunted atmospheres gained the duo fans in Kieran Hebden (Four Tet), Caribou and Fuck Buttons among others, and earned them a place in end-of-year lists by tastemakers Phonica and Boomkat.
Roll The Dice's music tells stories. What sets them apart from many of their contemporaries is their attention to narrative detail: where other electronic musicians write insular tracks, Pardon and Mannerfelt write entire albums, each piece an intrinsic component of the whole. Their 2011 album (and first for The Leaf Label), In Dust, is a perfect example of that approach.
The handful of shows Roll The Dice played in 2010 – including Poland’s Unsound Festival, Brazil’s Rojo Nova and Sweden’s Full Pull and Volt - proved them to be equally unique live performers. Rather than allowing themselves to get caught up in the increasingly stale ‘two-guys-and-two-laptops’ mode, they use only analogue gear, keeping the human element present and allowing space for improvisation, with a strong visual presence. The results are captured in the duo’s Live In Gothenburg EP, released through Leaf in early 2011. Their first live performance of the year came at the monster Roskilde festival in July, a hint of things to come.
At a time when electronic musicians have once again fallen for the charms of the analogue synthesizer, its grainy textures and tactile nature, Roll The Dice are far from the only group exploring these sonic spaces. But by focusing on the stories they tell, Pardon and Mannerfelt use past instruments to forge new paths into the future.
