RAMBLE SONG – 2021

With Ramble Song, BERLIN propels music [a driving foundation in earlier work] and the cinematic into the foreground. A poetic ramble full of beauty but also disappointment unravels in a series of tableaux. Ramble Song meanders between melancholy and black humour, inspired by the figure of the drifter ­– the nomad who cultivates a form of indecisiveness and who lurks in each of us.

Onstage there is a theatrical installation. This organism in sleep mode, with something that resembles a continuously audible and visible respiration, is animated through live music and footage. The soundtrack is wide-ranging, featuring echoes of new-classical music but also energetic krautrock and a diversity of synth-driven soundscapes. The daily noise between our ears here gives way to a musical universe that gets crystallized in images – and vice versa.

Ramble Song features four musicians onstage: BERLIN’s in-house composer Peter Van Laerhoven, who has been creating BERLIN’s soundscape from the very beginning, Tim Coenen [Miet Warlop, Het nieuwstedelijk, The Go Find, Roadhouse Libra,..], Eric Thielemans [EARR, Chantal Acda, Tape Cuts Tape, Ben Sluijs Quartet, BERLIN's Jerusalem and Remember The Dragons,..] and Tine Hubrechts [o.a. The Bear That Wasn’t]. The performance will be accompanied by a physical [vinyl] and digital release of the music.

Ramble Song differs from earlier work in formal terms, but is vintage BERLIN in terms of inventive puzzling with (presentation) forms to achieve a powerful whole. The profound humanity that characterized previous, often documentary work is taken even further in this fictional work, averse to the anecdotic and to dominant storylines.

photo © Koen Broos