The band ROUÉ came to life during the Covid19 pandemic as a remote project of the multi-instrumentalists Schahryar Kananian and Steffen Andrae. Kananian and Andrae took on a compositional approach which was not based on physical presence but on a digitally shared project between their homes in Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig, respectively.
The band’s debut stems from the experience of social isolation, but also reflects overcoming it through “joint creative work.” The EP, titled Eastwest / Remote also signals the geographically significant coordinates of the band members: Germany, the United States, and Iran. It arrives digitally and on 12” vinyl on June 28th, 2024. Their single “Transcender” is out now.
Eastwest / Remote incorporates a wide variety of musical influences ranging from Indie Pop and Electronic music to Post-Punk, dark Jazz, and other elements.
Heavily influenced by Radiohead, ROUÉ brings those influences to a new musical environment defined by Electronic elements and Post-Punk references.
Lyrically, the songs of Eastwest / Remote deal with “longings and imaginary worlds that became particularly present during the years of lockdown and were to remain unsatisfied.”
For the refinement of the sound of Eastwest / Remote, ROUÉ worked with the Hamburg-based electronic producer Lukas Endhardt. The graphic design put together by Fabian Bremer (AUA, Velcros) is based on a painting by the New York artist A.T. Gregor.
As with many of her works, Gregor’s painting “Pressed upon a Pane” addresses issues of “isolation, confinement, and yearning,” hence resonating with the themes of Eastwest / Remote.
