Samuel Rohrer has shared “Hungry Ghosts,” a live performance work that reflects on our established system’s failure. He recorded it at Sonic Jazz at the fifth edition of Wonderment Festival, 2020.

“Within our routines, we still fall for old habits and keep nurturing and repeating them,” the Swiss jazz drummer tells XLR8R. “We walk on territory which is built on old beliefs, like old ghosts sitting on our shoulders, making us repeatedly feed their needs.”

“Hungry Ghosts” showcases Rohrer’s skill in turning the drum kit into a lead instrument, which is to say that everything else within the audible environment exists to complement the character of the percussive playing rather than to stand apart from it. Its tonal palette is expectedly rich for those familiar with Rohrer’s work, and its pensive tone hearkens back to the “wide open” state of electronic music in the mid-late 1990s.

In 2020, Rohrer released Continual Decentering, his last solo album. You can read more about his work in his XLR8R podcast here.