Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe and Ariel Kalma – FRKWYS Vol 12: We Know Each Other Somehow

RVNG Intl.

The slow evolutions of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (AKA Lichens) and Ariel Kalma are curling my head to perfection, all long sustains and modular gurgles mingling gently with the environmental ambience of aviary tweets, bubbling brooks the call of the wild. The saxophonics climbing through most tracks like a waking body stretching in span-like evocations, coupled with the blissful smoothness of simple melodies that would make Popol Vuh blush. The more you listen, the less aware you become of the tick and tock, the churn of reality disappearing as you slip bio-rhythmically into its meditative space.

This is a must for all you headphone fanatics. “Magick Creek”’s rebus strips of drone rotisserie swirling your head circling the padded heartbeats that seem to smash deep into your cerebellum, as a saxophone casts sultry shadows over undulating waters. The synthetics and acoustics blurring, holding unison over your consciousness in Tangerine tinted hues; beautiful stuff that only gets better as you delve further. A promise that is clearly written all over the frankly brilliant “Mille Voix”, a sumptuous Cocteau-esque slow-motion of vocal swirls pinned to a harmonium-like drone, as the sax rides the prevailing thermals of a reddening sunset.

“Gongmo Kalma Lowe” is more spacey, with its bassy thumps and half-flighted tunes. Modular grumbles overrunning light metal percussions, like a clever take on ambient industrial with its misty gamelan of farm gates, milk churns and sine sycamores. “Strange Dreams”  is another stand-out track, a true taste of the mystical in a wavering re-dux of a tune from Kalma’s Evolutionary Music, here tied to a polyphonic chant that devotionally waxes and wanes, with a weirdly caught panting that’s plucked from underneath (or within) sounding like the pull of a saw through wood.

“Wasp Happening” seems to be recycling the chordic spine of “Magick Creek”, diffusing it as things literally dissolve (very much like the performers’ egos) into a rich narcotic majesty awash with crystalline repetitions and the shamanic purr of a digeridoo. A bleeping constellation of stars that ribbon-weave the tracks closure and introduces the final “Miracle Mile”,  a track whose natural atmospheres and tambourine rustles lead us down a winding jungle path in the searing heat of the day, vividly capturing the remoteness of the recording’s location. The odd swarming texture of spooked birds breaking from the branches as a witch doctor’s shaker clatters across the peppering modulations, conjuring up a dance of excited insects.

We Know Each Other Somehow documents two like-minded voyagers in search of an appreciation, attempting to hold onto a (often fragile) resonance (a beauty even) that’s so often sacrificed under the concrete of progress.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-