- "Man Behind The Curtain" is how Roger 23, AKA Roger Reuter, is described on his Discogs profile, and it's an apt take on this producer a decade into his career: with releases on labels like Playhouse and Meakusma, plus as especially memorable mix for mnml ssgs, but with less name recognition than all that would suggest, it's as if he's been hiding in plain sight this whole time. His music on Elemental 7, his latest and release number two for the fledgling Poisson Chat Musique label, also possesses a tantalizingly anonymous quality: like PCM's first release, an EP by the eponymous label head, Elemental 7 doesn't necessarily go where no dub techno has gone before, but its quality sets it apart from much of the pack.
"Elemental 7" is nothing if not immersive: Roger 23 places us deep within the echo chamber, leaving us only a prickly little beat as a breadcrumb-lined path back to reality. "No Solution" hits a bit harder, albeit at a slower pace and with darker and more ominous dub chords. By "Ambient V," a snowstorm seems to have effectively killed our visibility, obscuring the beat and leading us around in circles. It's a humble release to be certain, but Roger 23, obviously hard at work behind that curtain, seems refreshingly content to let his sounds and mastery of the genre do the talking.
Tracklist A Elemental 7
B1 No Solution
B2 Ambient V