Artist Profile: Leon Raum
Leon Raum, a multi-instrumentalist, producer, and DJ from Germany, is a fourth-generation musician whose work spans a breadth of genres, gently floating upon cognitive gulfs and submerging to new depths in his pursuit of the “moment”.
His musical journey began before he was even born, with his father softly drumming beats in odd time signatures on his mother’s stomach in order to soothe the unborn child. His grandfather was a child prodigy at the cello and continues to work in the avant-garde realm to this day.
His father, who works as a producer and multi-instrumentalist, built Raum his first drum kit at just three years old, choosing the drums as a proper entry point to music for the young boy.
As he grew older, he learned piano and a variety of other instruments, beginning to play live shows as a child and teenager. He played the drums in a local big band, receiving regular gigs in his area and gaining his chops on stage.
However, as he has grown older, it is his prolific work in the German music industry that has set him apart as an artist. His work with electronic jazz group Bokoya, hip-hop duo Wyl, and soul jazz project Wukan has established his ability to improvise and helped to develop a musical philosophy that pervades his sonic corpus.
“[In making music] there’s only really a short moment that you flow with, and then you just try to consolidate it step by step and not lose it… I feel like it's a thing of staying open and letting go, and I also do a lot of [this] without actually producing anything, at least I try, because I feel like that's a really big part of the substance of music.”
In Raum’s multi-faceted work, this philosophy manifests itself in different ways. In producing and recording, it involves abstaining from the temptation of perfectionism. In DJing, it involves reading the crowd and altering the vibe of the music accordingly; Raum says that he often struggles to relay to venue operators what they can expect from his DJ sets other than something that will “fit the moment”. In playing with a group, it involves being wholly open to the demands of collaboration and improvisation, allowing the music to flow where the will of the group takes it.
Raum says that Bokoya, his favorite group to collaborate with, embodies this approach perfectly,
“The last gig we played [as Bokoya], we didn't play for one year, and then we just came together and talked about music for five minutes before the show, and then just played. It's always so fresh and in the moment, and everyone can go in with their own impulses and be who they are in the moment.”
Raum also, last month, released his first solo project, an infused collection of instrumental hip-hop tracks entitled “Basement Meditation”. In his pursuit of the “moment”, the project incorporates various genres, enfolding itself into a tight bundle of rhythms and loops. He says that his solo creative process, much like everything else he pursues, is dependent upon his involvement in and embracement of the way the music flows naturally. His practice of interplaying genres is not so much a deliberate fusion as it is an outpouring of sounds and rhythms embedded in his psyche.
“And I think for me, it's not so genre-focused.. I just start, maybe close my eyes, play some random keyboard without a click [track], and then I sample myself, and then see what kind of groove I hear below the sample or above the sample, and then go from there step by step. Then maybe I end up at some Brazilian funk stuff, or some ambient synthesized random soundscape. So I never know, in the best case.”
In addition to continuing work with his various collaborators, Raum aims to become more involved in DJing, diving into the laid-back lounge scene and finding new manners of engaging with a crowd. As he continues to work prolifically, his name will be one to follow across the number of musical avenues he pursues.