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Raphael Loher

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Raphael Loher, “Figuren” (Präsens Editionen, 2026)

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I was quite a big fan of this Swiss pianist’s solo debut (2022’s Keemuun), which is rather fortuitous because this latest album is both the spiritual and literal descendent of Keemuun’s swirling and delirious prepared piano workouts. More specifically, Figuren’s source material comes from ten intimate studio performances of pieces from Keemuun that have now been unrecognizably transformed through “deconstructed melodic elements, isolated individual tones, and extracted resonances.” While some reworkings from that process apparently surfaced on Loher’s previous album (the more dissolved and hazy Hug of Gravity), they have since undergone yet another radical transformation, as Loher ran fragments of melody through a Revox B77 tape machine and “subtly altered their pitch before digitizing and reshaping them once again.” The result feels akin to a cool tape loop album, as repetition and distressed tape effects transform Loher’s melodies into a beautifully broken, haunted, intimate, and otherworldly soundworld of lingering dissonances.

I was recently struck by how Loher’s solo piano work loosely parallels William Basinski’s career, as Basinski has spent years weaving magic from a box of old tapes while Loher has now released three albums distilled from solo recordings made while his main project (KALI Trio) was on hiatus during the COVID pandemic. The similarities do not end there, however, as Figuren also captures Loher at his most minimal, as these eight pieces are all composed of simple melodic fragments that resemble two or more tape loops that are sufficiently out of phase with one another that gradual and subtle transformations occur. Unlike Loher’s considerably more intense main project, however, these piano miniatures are never headed towards any sort of explosive crescendo or big payoff and instead seem to linger in a state of hypnotic suspended animation (a situation that I am perfectly ok with). In fact, Morton Feldman is probably the closest reference point, as Loher excels at transforming seemingly disjointed and pointillist clusters of notes into sublime reveries of uneasy dissonances and lingering decays.

In my favorite piece, “Figuren I,” a few murky and melancholy chords bridged by a delicate melody languorously loop with minimal variation. While it is admittedly quite a brief and overtly simple piece, those notes leave behind a tenderly beautiful ghost trail of quavering decay and subtly shifting harmonies and that ghost trail is the real show as far as I am concerned. The following “Figuren II” is another sublime highlight, as a stammering and pointillist prepared piano motif seemingly overlaps upon itself to subtly transform the rhythm, harmony, and melody. Elsewhere, “Figuren VI” weaves dark magic from the collision of a disjointed harmonic-like melody and the insistent pulse of a murky bass note, as it feels like two patterns are getting closer and closer together in a cramped space to conjure a sense of increasing tension and volatility. 

The closing “Figuren VIII” is yet another quiet stunner, as it feels like a cut-and-pasted and off-kilter progression of darkly jazzy chords fitfully disrupted by small hesitations. It calls to mind a malfunctioning and lovesick player piano mechanically expressing its heartache with a stumbling and obsessive motif that loops into eternity. Unsurprisingly, the remaining pieces are similarly understated variations on circular, faltering, and broken minimalist melodies and they are all quietly mesmerizing as well. While I suspect that this album is probably the logical endpoint for Loher’s inventive deconstruction and mutation of Keemuun’s source material, it is entirely possible that he will someday surprise me again and pull yet another rabbit out of his hat. If not, he definitely managed to end this series on a high note, as the whirlwind intensity of Keemuun and the tender, haunted miniatures of Figuren are as different as night and day, yet both are boldly original, sophisticated, and fascinating works of art.

Listen here.

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Raphael Loher, “Keemuun” (three:four records, 2022)

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This may be Swiss pianist/composer Raphael Loher’s first solo album, but he has crossed my path before with his Baumschule trio (featuring Julian Sartorius and Manuel Troller). I am much less familiar with Loher’s other trio (KALI), but the importance is that he has spent time improvising with inspiring musicians and has accumulated some very intriguing compositional ideas along the way. Interestingly, Keemuun is itself a bit of an improvisatory collaboration with inspiring (if unwitting) musicians, as Loher often played along with albums by other artists while experimenting with his rapid-fire piano patterns (Beatrice Dillon’s rhythmically adventurous Workaround was a particularly central touchstone). In fact, just about everything about this album’s evolution feels like fertile grist for a “galaxy brain” meme: a prepared piano album…limited to only ten notes spanning two octaves…improvised against cutting edge techno rhythms…but with all of those foundational rhythms totally excised from the final recording. Needless to say, all of those factors make for a very cool album concept in theory, but I am pleased to report that Loher’s brilliant execution has made this a killer album in reality as well.

The album consists of four numbered pieces, the first of which is considerably more subdued and minimal than the others (and shorter too). To my ears, the opener lies somewhere between bleary Morton Feldman-style dissonance and a dying, slightly out-of-tune music box performing its own elegy. It makes a perfectly fine (if understated) introduction, but I doubt I would be writing about Keemuun if it did not catch fire with the second piece and sustain that white-hot level of inspiration for the remainder of the album.

That second piece opens with a rapid arpeggio pattern that quickly begins unraveling into tendrils of new melody. It packs quite a mesmerizing effect, as it feels breathless, delirious, unpredictable, and endlessly spiraling. Then, around the five-minute mark, Loher downshifts his circular patterns into a plinking simmer that calls to mind a blurred and hallucinatory twist on gamelan. Notably, two of Loher’s central themes for the album were “continuous movement of the left and right hands’ and “a specific technique of piano preparation,” so “II” marks the first explosive realization of that vision.

The third piece is yet another stunner in a similar vein, though its spiraling arpeggios have more of a “pulsing wave” dynamic. Loher proves to be something of a genius in the realm of dynamics in general, as his subtle changes in attack and emphasis give the piece the organically kinetic feel of shifting sand dunes. Moreover, Loher’s piano preparation technique works some magic of its own, as his notes have a metallic physicality and leave a smeared and lingering haze of strange harmonies in their wake. The album winds to a close with another “Feldman meets broken music box”-style piece, but it has a much darker and more sinister tone this time around. Gradually the sense of menace subsides to reveal a deep sadness, but that sadness builds to a rhythmically sophisticated crescendo of broken-sounding interwoven melodies.

In its final moments, the piece (and the album) dissolve into a simple melancholy melody that leaves a ghostly afterimage hanging in the long spaces between the notes. It makes for a lovely and quiet comedown from the technical tour de force at the heart of the album. Obviously, one more tour de force would have been just fine by me, but this is a damn-near perfect album in all respects. Notably, the conception of this album coincided with an epiphany in which Loher became less interested in “confronting” audiences with his art and more interested in creating something “beautiful but strange.” I honestly do not know how Loher could have possibly done a better job at realizing that objective, as Keemuun is quite a brilliant and moving statement.

Listen here.