Si Schroeder

Artist Information

Biography

Si Schroeder is a six-foot hairy male who makes 'music'. This 'music' generally sounds like classic songs in the Simon & Garfunkel vein mixed with an old recording of a drunken Slovenian orchestra playing backwards through an AC-15. There's a little bit of Africa in there too. And, somewhere within this melange, Si sighs in a soft, whispered voice of love, mental illness, international terrorism, and the problems he has with his homeland.

The reasons for this are varied; Si used to be one half of Schroeder's Cat, a legendary Sonic-Youth/MBV-impersonating act which toured sporadically in the mid-1990s and released on LA's Emperor Norton. He loves archive recordings of ethnic, folk, jazz and classical music - the older, the better. He also loves sixties pop music and psychedelia. Some electronica and instrumental hip-hop also gets through his radar. And he also has his own thing to say about where we all came from - and where we're going…


His current live shows attempt to find a bridge between live electronics, guitars, drums, percussion, and the combined singing of men, women, children and machines. In various guises Si Schroeder has blown the PA systems of Dublin, London's influential Kosmische club, PopKomm Berlin, New York's IntelFest, and Chicago. Expect toy pianos and toy planes, bleeps and beats (and bleats...) bells and chimes, drones and choirs... and expect to think differently about music, and the world, when you leave.

Instrumentation

Simon Kenny - Vocals / Guitar
Brian Mooney - Guitar
Kevin Brew - Keyboards / Vocals
Jimmy Eadie - Bass
Brian O'Connell - Drums

Discography

"Coping Mechanisms" CD Album
Trust Me I'm A Thief Records

C4 - Download Single
Trust Me I'm A Thief Records

Official Website

http://www.trustmeimathief.com

Audio

Video

Photo Gallery

Press

• CD Of The Week! [+ Show ]
  

  It doesn't take very long to cop that you're in the presence of something rather special here. Iris...It doesn't take very long to cop that you're in the presence of
  something rather special here. Irish electronica may be populated
  by a large and prolific gallery of enthusiastic producers and players,
  but few have yet demonstrated the wherewithal and musical smarts
  to pull off any kind of grand statement or big splash. Until now.
  You're ready to give Simon Kenny a standing ovation even before
  the second track on this beautiful, beguiling, dreamy album has
  finished.
  
  Once half of hugely derivative Dublin indie act Schroeder's Cat,
  Kenny's new sonic adventures are far more interesting because he's
  working from so many different sketches. Instead of simply going
  along with the current electronic pop flow, Kenny seeks to make full
  use of all the music he can hear whirring around in his head. For
  instance, you can hear echoes of indie tweeness on Eyes-Wide, but
  this is soon blanketed by a bubbling sweep of see-sawing electronics.
  Elsewhere, Kenny's fondness for psychedelia and folk cause some
  fascinating shapes to develop, especially on Duck and C4.
  
  Of the many gems here, the one you'll return to again and again may
  well be Lavendermist, a track that builds from a haunting drone into
  the most ecstatic swinger in town, complete with flutes and whistles.
  Doughty, confident and ambitious, Coping Mechanisms is an album
  you really must hear.
  
  
  
  

• 9/10 [+ Show ]
  

  THE HOTPRESS 31/05/2006 Reviewd By Phil Udel 9/10 With the mystery surrounding him/them/it, S...THE HOTPRESS
  31/05/2006
  Reviewd By Phil Udel
  9/10
  
  With the mystery surrounding him/them/it, Si Schroeder could well
  be our very own Gnarls Barkley. That there is a connection with
  Schroedersound and Schroeder's Cat is clear, but from there on in it
  all gets a little murky. There is talk of a six foot hairy biped in his
  30's, as well as references to brainchilds, sampling machines and the
  like...
  
  Not that any of this matters because Coping Mechanismsis such an
  astonishing record. In many ways it's very Dublin, and more
  specifically, very Trust Me I'm A Thief. But the important thing is this:
  if you thought you had it up to here with mumbling singer songwriter
  types, think again. Coping Mechanisms effectively rewrites the book.
  
  Sound wise, its a tour de force, layer upon layer of subtle beats,
  feedback drenched guitars and haunting samples going into creating
  a noise that is at once quirky and baroque. A much overused phrase
  it may be, but this really is a beautiful experience. Slovakian
  orchestras criss-cross under African vocals, Sonic Youth style art
  rock is laced with Simon & Garfunkel melodies. As strategem go, it is
  risky territory - but when you add it all up, the album makes perfect
  sense. Si himself, if it is a he, hangs around in the mix somewhere,
  occasionally soaring to the fore, more often happily subsumed into
  the incredible sounds around him, sounding just as amazed at the
  sheer scale of it all as the listener.
  
  That Si Schroeder remains an underground phenomenon is astounding.
  Thing is, Coping Mechanisms has the potential to go where David Kitt,
  Jape, The Jimmy Cake and the rest have gone before and, whisper it
  quietly, eclipse the lot of them. Just you wait.......

• Superb [+ Show ]
  

  TOTALLY DUBLIN May 2006 Reviewed by John Brereton Hands in the air, I'm not a huge fan of elec...TOTALLY DUBLIN
  May 2006
  Reviewed by John Brereton
  
  Hands in the air, I'm not a huge fan of electronica, finding it full of
  beautifu moments and sounds but oddly devoid of vocal melodies and
  a soul that makes me return. I'm sure that a catchy vocal isn't really
  the point when the artist is creating this kind of record, but for me it's
  the difference between the Sydney Opera House & Ayres Rock; both
  are stunning formations, but its the rock that i'd return to again and
  again. Si Schroeder is a Dublin based artist who kicked around in
  post-punk ambient noise groups in the nineties with some some
  credibility and on coping mechanisms he's brought a huge amount of
  disparate influences to bear on an album that moulds the conventional
  blips and bleeps into a structured pop package with superb results.
  His sampling is never less than interesting and texturally the album
  is a multi-layered, multi-faceted smorgasboard of cleverly blended
  sounds that soothe and chill, while Schroeder's tender wistful vocals
  provide the icing on the cake. Aside from the antiquated gramaphone
  static that tends to be utilised somewhere along the way in most
  electronica records Schroeder's songwriting templates definitly smack
  of a love of the past, pitched somewhere betwen His Masters Voice
  recordings and Stockhausen to mid-sixties folkadelic and Radioheads
  Amnesiac. Put your headphones on, sit back and enjoy the flight as
  The Reluctant Aviator takes off on a barrage of detuned sounds
  that wrestle for airspace with backward looped Eastern European
  choirs before his industrial/shoegazing influences peak out from the
  growling bass riffs of the gravity-defying Lavendarmist. C4 deploys
  a waltz like rhythm to underpin a tune that imagines Nick Cave and
  The Flaming Lips crooning endless choruses with a drunken horn
  section to a tear sodden audience, before ending up to the theme
  tune to the Electric Picnic. Eyes-Wide is this millennium's Oh
  Superman, brilliantly executed. The album isn't without its superflous
  moments, but the overall standard is very high in all departments.

Setlist

1. Eyes Wide
2. Duck
3. Lavendermist
4. C4
5. Elaines Porsche
6. A Little More
7. Reluctant Aviator

Basic Requirements

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