Pursuing the patiently nuanced logic of his prior releases, Brooklyn’s experimentalist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (Lichens, OM) offers two extended hypnotic explorations made of slowly evolving arrangements of voice and modular synthesizer soundscapes, in the wake of sublime excursions for Type and DDS and alongside Jóhann Jóhannsson, Adult and Ariel Kalma in recent years.
Coaxing waves of drip-off dissonant tang into an alternately acrid, aqueous flow with the meter of a water clock in orbit or a deep sea hydrothermal vent spewing pure minerals under unfathomable pressure, Magnamite exhibits the relationship between human and machine, showcasing the coupling of the two instruments. Drifting and wildly pulsating, Heart of Sogguth on the flip side gives a second wind, picking up the pace to a 111 BPM bump soaked in spring reverb and riddled with hiccuping voices that appear to originate in or at least resonate in the listener’s own trachea with a potent tang whilst the groove quietly knots us in sensually elastic loops.
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
Vinyl, Digital, Streaming
Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin
Honest Jon’s/The Orchard
Magnamite recorded by Emmanuel de Barros at Grim, Marseille, 2014.
Studio Hugo Blanzat
Misha Hollenbach (PAM)