On August 19th Marius Lauber AKA Roosevelt releases his stunning, self-titled debut album via Greco-Roman / City Slang records.
To mark its launch Roosevelt unveils this video, which features two tracks from the album - ‘Colours’ and ‘Moving On’. This double-bill approach gives more insight into the album than the usual standard one song video format, but the intention was creative as much as it was practical. With a surreal sensitivity akin to his previous videos, ‘Colours’ stars Roosevelt alongside various characters in an abstract exploration of the five senses (touch, sight, smell, taste and hearing). The segue into ‘Moving On’ then follows the protagonists’ walk from their dream-like state into an everyday street scene, where they find themselves lost in the sensory overload of real world modern life.
Roosevelt’s signature hazy sound which ascends ever skywards is still present and correct on the album - but this time it’s honed, crafted and less loop based. ‘Roosevelt’ showcases Lauber as a fully developed recording artist, with an instinctive synthesis of different soundscapes. This is a record with a deep affinity to the dance music world unified with sophisticated, classic song structures.
The glistening and gently undulating disco of ‘Night Moves’ features uplifting layers of delicately constructed guitars atop propulsive beats and expanding acid synths lines, whilst ‘Moving On’ utilizes Balearic slo-mo percussive grooves to mesmerising effect. The Tangerine Dream-esque ’Belong’ is pure euphoria, ‘Heart’ is a bright and breezy airborn anthem, and the stunning sunrise instrumental hypnosis of ‘Daytona’ blends seamlessly into the sublime, cooly life-affirming ‘Fever’.
Influences span continents and decades - from a pinch of French electro pop, a smattering of LA yacht rock, the hypnotic repetition of German pioneers like Ash Ra Tempel/Manuel Göttsching and Neu!, to classic floor-friendly 80s pop from Chic, Talk Talk and New Order. Nu school figureheads like Floating Points, Todd Terje and Metro Area are also partially audible - all weaved into his own unique sonic tapestry.
Roosevelt’s growth was catalyzed by an early DJ residency at Kompakt’s Total Confusion party alongside Superpitcher & Michael Mayer, with the label also releasing an early remix of his for COMA. These experiences helped Lauber realize how dance music connects to its audience in a different way to what he'd experienced from earlier days spent performing in bands. “What I really enjoyed about DJing was that you could see the results immediately - there was feedback and interaction from the crowd”, he explains.
The darkness hinted at in the title of ’Night Moves’ is also a nod to the energy you can get from a well-timed crowd climax. “It's about the situation at night in a club when the energy is created as the night comes to an end,” he says. “The later the night gets there's this peak of energy and people are having the illusion that there's no end to it, and that power is incredibly strong.”
Following this nightclubbing baptism, his career as an electronic artist gathered momentum. With praise from a selection of taskemaker media, mixes for Boiler Room, Electronic Beats and i-D, support tours with Hot Chip and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and a litany of high-profile festival slots around the world, Lauber steadily built up a dedicated following.
Written, recorded and produced by Lauber over a period of two years. ‘Roosevelt’ the album is a pillow-soft hallucinatory dreamscape of nocturnal reveries and a lilting sense of melancholia, where sounds build and swell like waves.
