Dave Schoepke has been a companion of djummi for quite some time. We met about 5 years ago. Dave wrote to djummmi at the time and made me aware of his music, which I immediately found very special. And so we first released the single “Before Black and White” (2019) and then the EP “Drowning In Snow” (2021). His solo work also includes two other albums that Dave released on his own.

Through all of this work the path now leads to “Sun Will Follow”, Dave’s third solo album. It is the history of the development of composition-oriented percussion music from the original playful dogma “Drums Only” to the tension between synthesizers and drums. While Dave initially only used drum sets and percussion in his earlier works and extensively explored the sonic possibilities here, now synthesizers are used in the tracks on “Sun Will Follow”. As a result, his narrative resources have become richer and the “stories” have been able to gain further depth thanks to this new dimension.

Yes, “Stories.” I find Dave’s tracks to be narrative. The way they develop over time reminds me of the narrative flow of short prose. For example, in the piece “Buried Secrets”, Dave tells the story with his drumming. He doesn’t repeat constant loops, but rather his playing changes slightly, beats vary, a rhythm thickens or dissolves. In “We are the loop” he succeeds in telling the story by playing with different tempos at the same time and by intertwining sequences that he shifts against each other in order to bring about the longed-for resolution at the end with a concrete beat. In all of this, Dave always moves within a compositional framework. Every hit has its place and its meaning. Like the well-considered words in a text. This is the opposite of improvisation. The sometimes ambient or sequenced sounds of the synthesizers form a second, equal narrative level that combines wonderfully with that of the percussion. Sometimes they play around and accompany each other, sometimes they run towards each other.

But what do the tracks actually “tell” about? Everyone has to find out for themselves and look at the images that appear in their mind’s eye when they listen. Personally, the music transports me to the backdrop of dystopian science fiction films like Bladerunner and Omega Mann or gives me the feeling I get when watching an episode of Twin Peaks. The tracks all have something dark, enigmatic and sometimes depressing. It sounds like exciting uncertainties, open endings and something hidden in the twilight. But fortunately this is a dystopia with a happy ending, as the track “Hope Fuel” suggests as well, because: “Sun Will Follow”. At the end the sun shines and everything glows in pastel colors again, just like the tree does on the cover of the album. By the way, this was penned by the artist Deborah Sheedy, who also designed album covers for the US band TOOL in the past.