Roman Rofalski’s music rarely allows the piano to remain comfortable for long. Based in Berlin and moving fluidly between classical composition, jazz, free improvisation, and experimental electronics, he places acoustic instruments inside unstable electronic environments where repetition mutates, textures fracture, and machines begin to sound strangely vulnerable.
Across works like Fractal and Awaiting PM (recently pushed by London-based label Oscillation), Rofalski explores tension rather than resolution: between human touch and programmed systems, beauty and unease, structure and erosion. In this conversation, he reflects on fatherhood, prepared piano techniques, old samplers rediscovered after decades, and his fascination with sounds that feel physical, anxious, and alive all at once.
The result is the portrait of an artist less interested in preserving tradition than in pushing it into unfamiliar territory until it reveals something unexpected. A risky method, admittedly, but so is plugging emotions into electricity and hoping they survive the voltage.
Chain D.L.K.: Your music often seems to place the piano in hostile or unstable environments, almost forcing it to negotiate with machines rather than coexist peacefully with them. What attracts you to this tension?
Roman Rofalski: I feel the piano sits in a rich tradition, where it always is being treated as the superior instrument it for sure always was and still is. Besides being a companion for solo instruments, the setting which always interested me is a Duo Setting where it has to negotiate with for instance a Violin. In a Duo Sonata like one of Brahms or Prokofiev or alike, it is forced to go places it wouldnot go alone. Why should it be any different with a Duo Sonata with piano and machine?
Chain D.L.K.: “Awaiting PM” was composed during the months before the birth of your first son. Did becoming a father alter your perception of sound, silence, or time itself while working on the record?
Roman Rofalski: Time was a big factor, because the weeks before birth, I quit all gigs, stayed mostly home and waited. There was plenty of free time opening up, which has not been the case before. This time was calm and filled with tension at the same time, waiting for this particular event to happen that was supposed to change our lives completely. I tried to reflect this in the tracks, which somehow do not offer a classic arch, but are built as instabil musical landscapes instead.
Chain D.L.K.: The Akai MPC 2000 on “Awaiting PM” comes from your teenage years. Did reconnecting with that machine feel nostalgic, confrontational, or creatively liberating?
Roman Rofalski: All at the same time: nostalgic, because when I bought it with 17 years, my musical perception was still innocent and somehow free of any burden.
Confrontational, because I had to reflect everything I had been doing since then.
Creatively liberating, because after having acquired so much equipment and knowledge, I was forced to come back to basic editing, basic sound design and quite some other limitations.
Chain D.L.K.: There is something fascinating in the way your piano playing sometimes mimics sequencers and programmed systems, while the electronics occasionally feel strangely human and fragile. Are you consciously trying to blur those identities?
Roman Rofalski: As a trained classical pianist, for a long time I did not understand why people used arppeggiators on synths instead of just practicing the lines. On the other hand, drum machines were always longing for a certain human factor applying all kinds of things a real drummer would. Do. This is why I find it interesting to make a human musical source sound like a machine and a machine like a human source.
Chain D.L.K.: You move quite naturally between classical music, free improvisation, jazz, and experimental electronics. Do you still perceive genre boundaries at all, or have they become irrelevant in your compositional thinking?
Roman Rofalski: In my pianist life, I am constantly trying to blur those genres. I think, in recent history bands who created something original never thought in terms of genre, but tried out different things, slowly condensing it to something ideally authentic and original. I am still walking this path.
Chain D.L.K.: Some listeners describe your work as cinematic or noir-like, especially “Fractal”. Do visual images, architecture, or fictional narratives play a role in your writing process?
Roman Rofalski: Sometimes, sometimes not. But in the years before “Fractal”, I have been working closely with a visual artist (Jan Warncke, also a close friend and the designer of nearly all my cover art). This unconsciously altered my way of writing music.
Chain D.L.K.: On “Fractal”, you mentioned “tearing apart” your piano recordings digitally. Do you ever feel protective toward the acoustic purity of the piano, or do you enjoy violating that tradition?
Roman Rofalski: During the decades of classical piano training, I was honouring this tradition and purity to the max (which I am not regretting!). Now, in my own music I feel the urge to at least free it from tradition and expectations on how it should sound. Even a little bit.
Chain D.L.K.: Your work seems interested in repetition, but never in a purely minimalist sense. The patterns feel unstable, nervous, almost psychologically charged. What interests you about repetition that slightly mutates or collapses?
Roman Rofalski: I have always been attracted to the complexity of Indian rhythm systems. So, altering a repetition in a way it could be perceived almost as an electronical glitch, is quite interesting.
Also, if a loop stays the same for 4min, it has to be a very very good loop.
Chain D.L.K.: You cite artists like Tim Hecker, Andy Stott, and Craig Taborn alongside figures such as Boulez, Feldman, and Stockhausen. Do you experience these worlds as connected, or are you intentionally forcing unlikely conversations between them?
Roman Rofalski: I guess unlikely conversations between those characters happen only subconsciously. I simply listened to or worked on those guys at a certain period. And these were the people who made the strongest impact in that times.
Chain D.L.K.: There is a strong physicality in tracks like “Bass Resonance” and “Fractal Waves”, despite their abstract construction. How important is the bodily experience of sound in your music?
Roman Rofalski: I worked so much in acoustic settings with the piano without any amplification. Ever-since, I was longing for strong low end, sub woofers and for the impact a distorted guitar can have on the body.
Chain D.L.K.: Many contemporary piano-and-electronics projects lean heavily toward ambient beauty. Your music often embraces unease instead. Do you distrust purely “beautiful” sound worlds?
Roman Rofalski: Strangely I do. But I would call myself a cheerful and positive person. Somehow, depth and meaning in my perception of music isn’t tied to major chords…
Chain D.L.K.: The Oscillations label describes its philosophy as “maximal rather than minimal”. Do you identify with that idea artistically?
Roman Rofalski: This is something I still cannot help. I personally would love to express myself with songs that only feature 3 instruments and maximal clarity. But compositional-wise, I have always been drawn to “big” and “complex”…
Chain D.L.K.: Your music frequently feels suspended between composition and erosion, as if the structure might disintegrate at any moment. How much control do you actually maintain during the recording and editing process?
Roman Rofalski: This varies from project to project. For “Fractal”, I recorded piano samples for two days and edited and altered them over weeks at home. So I would call this “in control”, especially because back then I didnot use any equipment that had an “own life”.
With “Awaiting PM”, I have been recording longer jams with prepared piano, which I mainly left as they were. They led me to the arrangements I have built around them.
Chain D.L.K.: The prepared piano techniques on “Fractal” create textures that sometimes stop sounding like piano altogether. Is reaching that threshold important to you?
Roman Rofalski: Yes. I have played the piano in so many stylistic facets. I want to get rid of this historical burden.
Chain D.L.K.: The titles on “Awaiting PM” reference days of the week, creating a strange sense of cyclical waiting. Was the structure of the EP meant to reflect the psychological rhythm of anticipation?
Roman Rofalski: Honestly not. in the beginning, I wanted to release a snippet on instagram every week. When this did not work out, I just collected my pieces and put them in order. The best seven made it on the record.
Chain D.L.K.: Looking ahead, do you feel your artistic trajectory is moving further toward electronic abstraction, or do you imagine returning more directly to acoustic and improvisational forms?
Roman Rofalski: This is absolutely uncertain! At the moment, I am listening to lots of children’s music. To compensate this, my own music gets harsher and more extreme. But I am always attracted to musical beauty, so I really cannot plan ahead! 🙂
Visit Roman Rofalski on the web:
https://romanrofalski.com/
https://romanrofalski.bandcamp.com/