Rob Sheppardn & Jake Thompson – Without A Sound / Letter To The World
It’s sometimes a simple letter (well, an email to honor the truth), a few well-chosen words that get things rolling. For example, we were very touched by the nice cover letter that accompanied the current track of Rob Sheppard that he had written together with his drummer Jake Thompson at the beginning of summer. Rob Sheppard lives and works in Chicago, but had spent the summer in his homeland Des Moines, Iowa, playing shows and working on new material. Actually there wasn’t much more in the cover letter, but the way it was written was enough to make us curious. It made us a little curious about Des Moines, this by American standards manageable big city in the Midwest, about which we hardly know anything, except that in our youth we had laid virtual tracks through it as Railroad Tycoons (insurances? Gold-plated Capitol dome? Look!). It directly aroused very positive associations with us, from a beautiful summer in Iowa with gigs in very relaxed venues and trips there on open pick-up trucks. His video tour diary is also exciting in this context. Above all, it made us curious about what Rob was still producing. We immediately became aware of another letter, his Letter To The World published in October 2014, a beautiful alternative hip-hop number published under Creative Commons, produced by Low Res, for which there is an equally charming video on YouTube. And while we’re writing these lines on one of the hottest days of the also quite nice Offenbach summer, and besides awakening this little blog from its months-long spring sleep, his also very impressive Full-Lengh album Quest 42 runs in the background, which we also like very much. Well, letters just…
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Music license: CC BY