{"title":"Robert Merlak","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"potapanje-brodova","title":"Potapanje Brodova","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe latest album Potapanje Brodova is a follow-up to Robert's 2020 album Finomehanika, which was described by Steph Kretowicz for The Wire as \"delicately assembled combinations of organic and electronic sounds, wherein piano, field recordings and synths are made indistinguishable from one another in a layered motion of abstract ambience and gratifyingly crunchy textures\". On his new album, Robert continues to merge field recordings and synthesis, this time deploying a wider array of machines to grand effect.\nPotapanje Brodova began life in 2005 as an art installation in Rijeka, detailing the Croatian port city's post-war industrial collapse. The name is Hrvatski for \"sinking ships\", as well as the local title of the children's game Battleship. The installation's one hour soundtrack, which played on loop during the month-long residency, now exists on a single USB stick. This rusting steel case, with silver ship engraving, is displayed at Rijeka's Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, in memory of the exhibition.\nAlmost 20 years later, Robert has revisited and reworked these recordings on this new record. Alongside the exhibition soundtrack, we are treated to an archival 25-minute improvisation, using prepared piano and sample manipulation, recorded live in 2004. Be it the symbolic sinking of behemoth rusting hulls, or delicate interference under the piano lid, Robert's fascination with obsolete, subversive mechanics is writ large on Potapanje Brodova.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"SWIMS","offers":[{"title":"Tape","offer_id":50532178362699,"sku":"2218069","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/test_ac909f3f_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728115732"},{"product_id":"finomehanika","title":"Finomehanika","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn essential repress of the monumental 2020 album. Finomehanika was Rijeka-based Robert's first solo release in two decades since \"Albumski\" on pioneering avant-garde techno label Phthalo which put him on the map next to fellow artists as diverse as Dntel, Daedelus and James 'V\/Vm' Kirby.\nMerging piano and field recordings, Merlak moves between musique concrete, ambient, and neo classical, crafting great layers of depth and ambience combining the frayed melancholia of Vladislav Delay's Multila with the strangely real-sounding yet otherworldly mechanics of Autechre during their Confield years. All the while sounds from the natural world prevent us from drifting too far into the abstract, keeping us grounded in a fragmented, confusing but familiar environment. What makes Finomehanika all the more impressive is that it was produced in the early 2000s pre-broadband-Internet, post-war Croatia with sparse equipment.\nThe album features the artist's brother Miro, better known for his releases as Qwerty. The sleeve design was commissioned from Michael Tan known for his previous work with artists such as Blanck Mass and Dopplereffekt.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"SWIMS","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50887223738699,"sku":"2227538","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/test_9205c007_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1732525887"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/fr\/collections\/robert-merlak.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}