for this release,
RUTGER HAUSER were

Lisa Busby
Jamie Coe
Rose Dagul
John Harries
Jón Klæmint Hofgaard


a good sleep

the big bedroom, Rhoscolyn, Anglesey, Summer 2019.

A long drive, work worries trailing along behind us most of the way (neck of the bass guitar out of the window of Jamie’s car in front helps, though). Then mostly sunlight, dust hanging in sunlight, birds swooping and singing and sheep ambling in sunlight, a small world of house and garden, high banked paths with wild flowers like around Carnowen, beach and sea in sunlight. Going for chilly swims, playing cards and cooking and eating together, and the music seeming to come relatively easily mostly, though we got stuck sometimes and not all of it made sense when listened back to afterwards. Sleeping pretty well in fact, reading, being on holiday. Shortly afterwards pandemic and lockdowns and lots of new uncertainties, but none of that remotely imagined then.

These recordings have been sitting waiting for a few years, and it’s hard not to hear them as something of a time capsule now. As was usual for us, all pieces were substantially improvised, all of us in the room together with Sean recording and feeding us ideas and helping us work things through; and we generally didn’t try to re-play the emergent ideas or structures more than once. No rules really though. Sometimes we’d pre-record a part and then work to that. Sometimes we went out to look for sounds outside. Some elements were overdubbed, either at the time or later, back at home - because Klæmint wasn’t able to be with us in Wales, or just because they needed a little more thinking about.

Rutger Hauser make mostly improvised music with instruments, voices and words. There have been various groupings of four, five or six of us over the years, and recording-wise, we’re now three albums and a live EP into the journey. We’ve been fortunate to record in beautiful seaside places more than once.


"A folk record from a totally other place... 'Good Sleep' is a patient and spacious work... It's a cryptic album; one that simultaneously evokes lonely cityscapes and dense countryside landscapes with its wilting and swirling soundscapes, and one that rewards repeat listens...
An excellent release that crash-lands in the uncanny valley; a dark ambient album with a full band, or perhaps a post-punk record that's been lost in the woods for so goddamn long it's forgotten its own name. The album is a real mystery, one that's definitely worth unravelling." [Cal Cashin, Loud&Quiet]

"The band create pieces through improvisation, field recording and embracing of chance, and are gleefully scornful of structural norms... This is post-music in the best way." [Peter Hollo, Utility Fog/FBi Radio]

Rutger Hauser's spontaneously generated riffs and beats are peppered with found sounds from cassettes and records, and not-quite-sci-fi interjections of cheap synths and self-made electronics. Unofficial house band of The Lumen Lake experimental music nights at Lewisham Arthouse, Rutger Hauser are dedicated to an inclusive and accessible mode of group improvisation and to having fun in performance. [Cafe Oto]
“Somewhere between the two chronological and stylistic extremes of the South London experimental canon, partially bridging the gap between the uncompromising future-building of This Heat and the caterwauling noise-funk of Black Midi, lie improv-rock sextet, Rutger Hauser” [Luke Cartledge, The Quietus]

rutgerhauser.bandcamp.com/album/the-swim
critical praise for previous album ‘The Swim’:

“There’s a palpable trust that feels integral to how well the songs fit together, a belief in something close to supernatural in the group dynamic that enables them to make sense as a whole. The songs as artefacts become more than the sum of their individual elements elevated by something like alchemy.” [Claire Biddles, The Wire]

“A work of gentle exhilaration, that feels as profound when listened to on the 21 bus as it does when consumed way beyond the clamour of the city.” [Luke Cartledge, The Quietus]