Cid Rim, Sprint

At the end of 2022, Clemens Bacher, aka CID RIM, decides to trade the European winter for the first time in his life for sunshine and moves to Mexico City for a few months. The result is his new studio album SPRINT – a colorful ode to joie de vivre and a study on leaving one’s comfort zone.

Arriving on the other side of the world, Bacher starts boxing training in a park where he meets local creatives. He eats ripe fruit and raw fish, drinks light beers, and rents a studio. This studio on the roof of a residential building – with its worn equipment more a writing room than a recording studio – offers perhaps the best view in the city.

Bacher commits to writing a sketch every day there. He lives a happy life and devotes himself to what feels right. So it’s no surprise that SPRINT feels like a musical ray of sunshine – the opposite of sleet. The lead single “Yes” perfectly exemplifies this with its shameless and persistent positivity, cartoonish staccato piano chords, and heavy breakbeats. An idea just waiting to be grabbed from the sunlit air – and almost fully formed within minutes in Bacher’s studio. He describes how quickly the track practically wrote itself as an “almost magical experience.” That is the spirit of SPRINT: trust the process, don’t think, let it happen.

Usually a musical soloist, Bacher learns to rely on familiar companions for SPRINT – his school friends The Clonious and Dorian Concept. Both recall the moment he returned to Vienna with the first demos from Mexico:

Dorian Concept: “I think it must have felt like a full-circle moment when Clemens brought those demos back to us in Vienna – after having lived in London for years before Mexico.”

The Clonious: “I immediately told him: This music is something special. And for me, the beautiful end of the long chain of decisions that led him into the Mexican sun – and to this music – is the fact that he brought it all home to Oliver and me. A worn drum kit. A broken SM57. A Fender amplifier straight from mass production. In a world where flawless music production tools are easily accessible, it was so refreshing to hear something sonically unpolished.”

Dorian Concept adds: “For me, this record feels like a bold step outward for Clemens. Almost like he’s rushing toward something. It also reminds me of that unbreakable optimism Clemens has internalized – and how that manifests in an almost stubborn drive forward.”

So SPRINT is more a family affair than a solo project and marks – on the brink of fatherhood – a new departure for CID RIM. Having left his beloved Vienna to let in the sun, the album is a monument to new perspectives, positive life decisions, and trust in those closest to you.

As the fourth album in his career, SPRINT sounds refreshingly unburdened – the expression of an artist who has nothing to prove and just wants to have fun. In the studio as much as on stage. (Press text)

Program and cast

Clemens Bacher: drums, vocals, synthesizer, electronics