RIYL: Air – Premier Symptômes / Hiroshi Yoshimura – Surround / Yasuaki Shimizu – Kakashi / Heisei No Oto: Japanese Left-field Pop From the CD Age, 1989-1996
Release date: 6th of June 2025
Bandcamp Pre-order HERE
Wholesale Pre-order HERE
Pre-listen + promo download in the Soundcloud player below
RWR’s latest release comes straight from Berlin’s underground Electronic Jazz scene. Simon Herody, originally from the South of France but living in the German capital since 2020, delivers an eight-track suite of ambient-informed Jazz.
The album grew out of solo gigs in hotel lobbies, low-key half improvised sets where Simon blended sequenced electronics with live sax, clarinet and flute. These in-between spaces, half-public and half-private, set the tone for Hard Lounge: an eight-track trip that’s ambient enough to fade into the background, but rich enough to keep you engaged.
There’s a clear love for 80s New Age and Electronic Jazz, but it’s not just nostalgia — the album also channels leftfield Japanese Pop and Ambient. A big turning point was hearing Heisei No Oto (that killer compilation on Music From Memory) & Music For Dance & Theatre, Vol. 2, also released on MFM, which blew the doors wide open in terms of texture and mood.
While working shifts at Motif, a bar and record shop in Neukölln, Simon started deep-listening to these kinds of records, thinking about how sound can shape space and attention. Design and architecture trickled into the album’s artwork, hinting at a broader idea: that music, like furniture or lighting, can be part of how a space feels — part of the design. That blend of curiosity and immersion became the blueprint for Hard Lounge, a record that plays with presence, atmosphere and memory.
‘At points, the mellow and introspective playing reminds us of luminaries such as Mal Waldron or Marion Brown, as well as more contemporary ambient jazz soundscapes emanating from the Leaving Records scene in L.A. or the hermetic solo recordings of G.S. Schray. Herody speaks of seeking to play with perceptions of time and space, rhythm boxes and synth loops leading steady pulses on ‘Table for Two’ whilst the freeform playing on top takes the mind elsewhere. Tracks like ‘Sleep Tuff’ experiment with a more broken-beat, funk style upon which Herody merges keys and flute whilst lead single ‘Sunny Terasse’ is a proper multi-instrumental affair with delicate piano, a distant marimba melody and one of the most wistful solos on the whole album. Overall, the multiple moods across Hard Lounge commit to wax a particularly fun and inspired moment in time on Herody’s musical journey.’
– Fergus Clark (12th Isle)
Simon Herody, born in 1996, is a French musician and sound artist who loves exploring the connections between landscapes, memories and improvisation. He studied at the Villa Arson School of Fine Arts in Nice and has turned sound into a social and sculptural medium always keeping space and community in close mind.
Simon never formally studied music and never intended to. Completely self-taught, he started playing a plastic clarinet at the age of 20 without any thought of making music. He quickly got hooked and began experimenting with any instrument he could get his hands on: saxophone, accordion, piano, etc. He discovered electronic music composition in 2020 when he moved to Berlin and started recording on tape and cassettes making devotional instictive electro-acoustic ambient. In his compositions and performances, Simon mixes saxophone, flute, and piano, drawing inspiration from meditative and spiritual jazz while blending in various other influences. Improvisation is a big part of his process, helping him create immersive pieces where active listening and spontaneity change how we perceive time and space.