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STOREY, ROBIN (RAPOON) - On the Borderline / A Dark Telling

Format: BOOK + CD Label & Cat.Number: Soleilmoon Rec. SOL 199BK Release Year: 2024 Note: hardcover book (176 pages) with a biography of the man behind RAPOON and ex ZOVIET FRANCE, plus a detailed survey about his paintings and visuals: 100 pages of colour + b/w feat. his works from the 1970's to 2020; plus a full CD with new recordings "A Dark Telling", lim. ed 400 copies / IN STOCK NOW!!! Price (incl. 19% VAT): €87.50 More Info https://rapoon.bandcamp.com/merch/on-the-borderline "On the Borderline is two books in one: It's an autobiography by Robin Storey, the musician best known as Rapoon. And it's a comprehensive survey of his parallel career as a visual artist. Rounding out the package is compact disc containing all-new recordings, attached inside the front cover. Robin Storey's autobiography starts with a unvarnished review of his early years growing up in a hardscrabble village near the Scottish border, in the far north of England. He was often cold and hungry, dressed in second-hand clothes, foraging for wild mushrooms, or turnips and carrots pilfered from fields near his home, where he shared meals with his parents and four siblings. His introduction to art preceded his experiments in music, both of which are examined in detail. He covers his days playing football, attending art school, meeting girls, dabbling in improvisational music, working as a graphic artist, living in a variety of precarious situations, and eventually finding himself making music as a co-founder of Zoviet France. Gigs around England and Europe followed, along with marriage, fatherhood, and a more settled existence. The majority of the book is given over to a comprehensive review of Robin Storey's output as a visual artist. His paintings regularly appear on the jackets of his albums, but only a fraction of his work has been widely published, and the second portion of On the Borderline is filled with page after page of rarely seen paintings and charcoal drawings. The images are grouped chronologically, allowing readers to appreciate the progress and evolution of his artistic style. There are more than 100 pages of color and black-and-white images, starting in the 1970s and carrying forward into 2020s. It's an enchanting collection of sensuously drawn charcoal nudes, abstract or impressionist patterns evoking primordial landscapes, alien voyagers, and vibrating hallucinations usually visible only to ancient shamans. On the Borderline is a hardcover book with 176 pages, most printed in color. Limited edition of 400 copies. A new compact disc recording A Dark Telling is mounted inside the cover." https://www.soleilmoon.com/shop/robin-storey-on-the-borderline/ BOOK EXCERPT I was born on the edge of nowhere in the far north of England, close to the Scottish border, in January 1955. This was the exact middle of the decade and only ten years after the end of the Second World War. Reminders of the conflict were everywhere. Almost every village had an airfield nearby and almost every farm had a chicken coop made from the nose cone of a C-47 Dakota aircraft. Either the military sold off a lot of spare parts after the war or the farmers helped themselves to whatever was left lying around. In Newton Arlosh, the village where I grew up, there were about a dozen surnames. Fairishs, Grahams, Bells, Armstrongs, Stampers and Wilsons, all these names belonged to the clans of the old Border reivers. These outlaws stole and plundered across the border throughout the late 13th century and during the next 400 years. Brothers, cousins, uncles, they all owned the farms around the village, and for many, the old rivalries and feuds lingered. Douglas nose cones were not the only item that people in our area appropriated. Folks purloined anything that might be useful and put those items to work in other ways. Some gateposts may once have been part of a stone circle, many of the goodly shaped stones in their houses came from the goodly shaped stones of the Roman Wall, and so on. History was coerced into useful objects, so although it sometimes seemed like it, history didn’t actually stand still in this place. We were the only Storeys in the village. We were part of a clan in those old days, but most of our kin now lived far to the east at the other end of the wall. I live in the east now too, in Newcastle, by the North Sea coast. The sea on the west coast is not like the one on the east coast. The sea on the east coast flows down from the Arctic and is generally freezing cold, whilst the sea on the west flows upward from the Gulf of Mexico and is much warmer. The western sea where I grew up was absent for most of the time and then twice a day, the tide would flow in across the vast marshlands and mudflats of the Solway Firth, and what had been earth would be covered by seawater with treacherous undercurrents and sinking sands. Many people drowned here, caught by the swiftness of the rising water. "Asmus Tietchens once told me we must write our own histories, as nobody would do it. That might not be entirely true, but some do so; every man is a volume. The interesting question is how to approach your story. What do we think makes a great story, and what do we leave out? I’ve said it before, and here again, I love reading. Biographies and autobiographies are top of the list of my interests, and I am not ashamed to say that I read all books from all members of Kiss and The Police, and Phil Collins seemed more likeable after reading his memoir. I also read the one from Bruce Dickinson, the Iron Maiden man and here’s what I mean by ‘what’s interesting and what’s not’. Dickinson is also a commercial airline pilot, which could have been more interesting, especially when it was hush-hush espionage. Closer to home is ‘On The Borderline’ by Robin Storey, also known as Rapoon. Before that, he was a member of Zoviet France, a band dear to my heart. It is a book I was looking forward to reading a lot. Partly because of knowing more about the earliest days of Zoviet France, which, in the 1980s, was a mystical band, not unlike The Residents, why he left and to know more about Rapoon, next to whatever else he does daily, assuming he’s not full time occupied with his music. And last but not least, something about the business. The book is in two parts. The first half is his story, early years, Zoviet France time, going solo, memories about touring (good and bad), and so on. The second half is Storey’s paintings, five sections, one per decade. Some of this is what we know from the artwork of his records, the sort of tribalist, mythical caveman painting, but also, surprisingly, some non-abstract sketches and paintings, portraits and such like. I do not know the quality; I have no expertise in that area. I enjoy what I see but I always liked his cover artwork, which is highly personal. In the autobiographical part, Storey delivers partially delivers the goods. There is an extensive first section, say the first 20 pages of densely printed A4 pages, which is all about his youth, growing up in a small village in the North of England, getting to know strange music, getting into drugs, doing music, painting, girls and just when I thought this was all good and well, but now tell me about Zoviet France, because that’s what I like to know. When that started, I was delighted, and while not (luckily perhaps) the kind of story in which every record is talked about, it was an exciting read. Also, Storey created some material that was deemed to be rhythmic but attracted the attention of Death Ov Vinyl Entertainment, which became his first solo release as Rapoon. The explanation of where the name comes from is later, in a lengthy chapter consisting of shorter bits of life at home. As for playing music, Rapoon never brings in the amount of money to support a wife and two kids. There is also a day job, and he talks about his career within an AV company and with children later on, which also brought him some trouble, all explained in the section about daily life. The tour stories are of more interest (depending, of course, on what you want to know) as they cover things that more people experienced – my thinking here is a few musicians are reading Vital Weekly; comparing notes is always funny. Storey only tells us a little about dealing with labels, rip-offs (maybe there were none) or such things. On several occasions, he says, “I don’t know”, or “I am not sure”, which is a pity: we like to know! Throughout a fine book; some of it I didn’t need to know, some was very interesting. Storey’s style is not always to the point, but he doesn’t meander too much, which is good, obviously, along with the hardcover book (as said, A4 or so sized, thick paper; imagine a Vinyl On Demand book, which looks great, but isn’t easy to read) comes a Rapoon CD, and knowing more about technology (and here too, he is relatively concise; no endless lists of software, hardware, or all too technical), this is something to hear with different ears. I know Storey took offence in the past when I wrote his work sounded the same (and he quite rightly takes offence when people ask him if he recorded another ten CDs before lunch; I know I would), but there is certainly a signature sound that undoubtedly makes Rapoon instant recognisable. The shorter loop approach, using various delays, creates this tangled web of voices, sounds, and patterns with that overtly minimalist percussive feel, adding that tribal flavour and connecting with the cover artwork. I haven’t heard all his work, so it’s not for me to say where this fits the overall Rapoon history. That’s not what this book is about; there is no descriptive list of his output. In terms of having a bit of ‘our’ history, this is a great book." [FdW/ Vital Weekly]