we are trees

We Are Trees - 1982

Boris Rogowski – The Darkness of Future Past
(out on piano and coffee records on November 7, 2025)

Jonas Burgwinkel—drums
Viktorija Kukule—vocals
Roland Muenchow—flute
Boris Rogowski—keyboards, (bass) guitar, percussion, programming, vocals
David Schuette—cello
Isabelle Seemann—vocals

Press info:
Somehow, Boris Rogowski’s The Darkness of Future Past manages to go from Renaissance and Baroque influences and minimalist piano pieces via Ambient all the way to arena-sized pop music. It has no right to work, but it works perfectly. I don’t know how.
If I had only one word to describe its general mood, I would call it haunting. And the album itself is haunted, too, by the ghosts of the past, of classical composers (Orlando DiLasso, Eric Satie and Alfred Schnittke explicitly, many others lurk in the shadows) and more recent musical specters. It’s called The Darkness of Future Past, and yes, that’s a Twin Peaks reference… but let’s not make too much of it, there are no real connections (I think!) except for a general love of mystery, darkness and beauty.

In contrast to Rogowski’s 2023 album The Waste Land that was largely defined by a good amount of classical rigor, consistent chamber instrumentation and a complete lack of vocals, The Darkness of Future Past is almost loose: We have long, winding instrumental pieces that straddle Ambient (The Past, Like a Strange Bird), Minimalism (The Bloom and the Flutter) and Jazz noir (the title piece). They are humming with sounds and melodies that always seem in a state of either synthesis or decay, giving way to one another or sticking around in the form of eerie echo loops that build up a dreamlike musical structure always on the verge
of collapsing into itself.
Those long-form soundscapes, some of which feature ominous spoken Journal Entries, alternate with solo piano pieces that sound like at least three different instruments—but were, in fact, all recorded with an old upright built in 1906 by some regal German manufacture. The audaciously titled Gymnopedie No. 4 wears its influence on its sleeve—and delivers on its promise: Rogowski’s love, respect and understanding of the original works of Eric Satie shine through in every note. Similarly, the other piano pieces, from the tiptoeing Sleeping Dogs to the dreamy, improvisational One Lonely Autoresponder Message, feel a bit like memory palaces—reminiscent of music that has always been around, but at the same time very much their own beasts.
And then, of course, we have the songs: Nothing Wrong is strikingly beautiful, its sparse musical arrangement serving as the perfect bed for Rogowski’s falsetto and the ghostly choir backing it. breatheINbreatheOUT is downright scary, like a field recording of some strange initiation rite: The words ‘breathe in, breathe out, it’s all right/mankind is no longer your kind’ are delivered in a moody croon that seems to channel the later Scott Walker.
And then, just when you think you have finally figured out how this album works, it leaves you with Them!, a monolithic sound colossus that begins as a shoegaze-y electro pop song and develops over 6 minutes into an arena-sized hymn with an otherworldly female voice lamenting ‘What a lonely world’ over and over. Rogowski did much of the work on The Darkness of Future Past in a desert cabin near Joshua Tree—maybe he passed Coachella on his way back; that, at least, would be a good explanation of the sound of Them!

There is a very clear and distinct consciousness of the past, and there are projections into the future that are as nebulous as they are frightening. The Darkness of Future Past has the power to conjure up mysteries, to shed just the right amount of light on them and keep us intrigued—without ever giving them up or serving us easy explanations. The beauty of the music itself remains a secret, one that Boris Rogowski as its composer seems hell-bent on protecting. After all, no-one needs to know who killed Laura Palmer.

Breathe IN Breathe OUT

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