I first stumbled across Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe on screen, as the scandi-commune-hippy-turned-black-metaller protagonist of Ben Rivers’ and Ben Russell’s splendid A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness. I’ve since really liked the unique, hypnotic vocals and general experimental shenanigans he contributed to collaborations with Ariel Kalma on RVNG Intl’s FRKWYS series, and with Jóhann Jóhannsson with Hildur Guðnadóttir on the penguin-bothering End Of Summer. I’ve not managed to keep up with his impressively prolific career since then, but his name has always been a guarantee that you’re going to find something worth giving a listen too, even if it’s not going to be easy.
Well, here he is in thrillingly, unashamedly avant garde form. We start out with those unearthly vocals, processed here into something which I can only describe as a kind of ayahuasca Ligeti. Elsewhere, we get thrumming modular synthesis, and some concrète-ish electroacoustic stuff. It’s actually, by a strange coincidence, treading territory not unlike that of the Kassel Jaeger record I just blogged, although (perhaps with the exception of those trippy vocals at the start) it’s a rather more grounded affair, in the sense that it feels like there’s a real connection with the physical body here, as well as with the mind. The swirly percussion can be disorienting, but I still experience it as being lost in a space rather than separated from it, if that makes sense. But enough of this fancy talk: know that this is a visceral, propulsive, and thoroughly fascinating journey.
I bought this from the artist’s bandcamp page.
dogrando writes about some records 