Rumpistol’s second album is in many ways a more demanding and challenging experience than his critically acclaimed debut from 2003. The melancholic melodies and warm harmonies, which played a big part on the debut, have receded into the background on ”Mere Rum”, and a more experimental approach to both sound and rhythms has emerged.

Several technical upgrades have made it possible for Rumpistol to add an endless amount of layers to his productions. The result of this is a deeper and more detailed sound that neither ends up being too polished nor too bombastic.

We find ourselves, therefore, on the (artistically) difficult border between pop and experimental music, and yet still ”Mere Rum” appears as a homogeneous record where sound coheres throughout the album. This is heard, among other things, this time in the instrumentation which is characterized by the use of hand played instruments such as glockenspiel, melodica, kalimba, saxopohone and especially guitar. This, however, does not mean that rumpistol has left the electronica-genre in favour of e.g. folkmusic but that the electronic element is very much present in the way that the acoustic elements are treated. The instruments are run through the machinery, where they get cut up, tweaked, stretched and filtered in imaginative ways.

The influence from the dub-genre is present on all the tracks like on the debut, and the rhythms are once again buildt up around dry clicks and adapted concrete sounds.

Last but not least, it´s worth mentioning how the music has evolved from being downbeat to upbeat. ”Mere Rum” might not be a pure dance record, but it is definitely more beat oriented than what we might usually expect from
Rumpistol.