Robert A.A. Lowe & Rose Lazar – Eclipses

I saw Robert A.A. Lowe last December, in his role as vibes merchant and general shaman figure for OM who were supporting Sunn O))). He sat to the right of a dimly lit stage and rattled a tambourine in time to Al Cisneros and Emil Amos’s sludgy groove, whilst seemingly in a state of half-trance. His presence had an unsettling air somehow, as if you half expected him to break into incantation, or to summon something from the dusty floors”¦ Lowe’s recent dalliance with OM is yet more evidence of what is fast becoming a broad and eclectic range of output. As part of 90 Day Men he has made intense, uplifting art-rock - something mirrored in his role as keyboard player with TV On The Radio - and he’s also made some pretty singular drone music as Lichens, a project that sees Lowe marrying his strange keening near-falsetto with acoustic instrumentation and huge walls of synths. Now, in tandem with Rose Lazar (who provides the odd, Deerhoof-like artwork), he’s making this quietly meditative hyper-real kosmiche music. And sounding right at home.I say hyper-real because at times Eclipses sounds almost too-much at home with the kosmiche sound, reaching into a kind of pastiche territory. Yet Lowe is deft enough and smart enough to walk this line successfully and in the end mould these mid-to-late ‘70s Cluster-like ruminations into something bright and airy. These tracks ”“ all recorded in a home studio using semi-modular and polyphonic analogue synthesizers - are full of light and space, and eschew any real bottom-end propulsion, relying instead on a trebly sense of pulse and vibration. A track like ‘Suno Vidis’ is a perfect example. Built around a simple bubbling synth line, it is little more than a light scoring on a sheet of glass, yet it manages to be bright and haunting all at once. ‘Kreintoj’ is similarly haunting in its simplicity, though this track has an intermittent backgrounded ominous bass tone to it. ‘Ŭyndham-a HorloÄo’ has elements of Eno’s limpid spaces, but the track ends with a devolution into tape hiss and a warbling oscillator. ‘Turing Punkto’ may be the signature track for the album ”“ a simple and beautifully conceived track, it revolves around nothing more than a three note synth figure with an occasional fizzing downwash of what sounds like backwards modulated tones.Hypnotising and meditative in its own gentle fashion, Eclipses is a worthy addition to Lowe’s considerable body of work and yet more proof of the durability and still-relative nature of the kosmiche sound.

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