Dean Roberts, the experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist who carried out within the New Zealand noise trio Thela earlier than embarking on a sequence of solo initiatives and information with Autistic Daughters, died this week, his labels Erstwhile and Kranky introduced yesterday (August 14). Roberts died in his sleep, Erstwhile’s Jon Abbey wrote, citing the musician’s sister. Roberts was 49 years previous.
Roberts, then a young person, shaped Thela with Dion Workman and Paul Douglas in New Zealand within the early Nineties, rising to prominence via Auckland’s free‐music scene with a pair of albums for the U.S. label Ecstatic Peace! The first, 1995’s Thela, was a landmark of rock minimalism, mixing post-hardcore guitar thrums with noise sonics and sparse percussion. The following 12 months’s Argentina added ambient parts and glints of melody, attracting admirers of the coalescing post-rock community in addition to laptop computer composers like Fennesz, who later collaborated with Douglas’ Rosy Parlane challenge.
When Thela parted methods, Roberts divided his output between releases underneath his personal identify and his White Winged Moth challenge, usually releasing on his personal label, Formacentric Disk, in addition to on Mille Plateaux and Erstwhile. Though these initiatives tended to foreground alien frequencies and sophisticated noise parts—notably his improv collaboration with Thurston Moore and Dr. Chad—he additionally started to sing, turning barren soundscapes into uncanny folks laments. He continued in the identical course on Autistic Daughters’ two albums for Kranky, Jealousy and Diamond and Uneasy Flowers, earlier than taking a pause from the studio and returning, from Berlin, in 2020 with Not Fire, the final studio album of his lifetime.
Among these to pay tribute was Lawrence English, who wrote on social media, “I am going to deeply miss you. Your way of transposing the world into song. Your way of finding the hidden voices in the instrument you played. Your smile & that laugh…always that laugh. To future ballads in future places.”
