Zomes

I've got another review up at Dusted today, this one of Improvisations, the third album by Asa Osbourne's Zomes, in which he turns towards the long-form. It's out this week on Thrill Jockey.

Zomes
Improvisations
Thrill Jockey

For two full-length albums as Zomes, Asa Osbourne has constructed short, mesmeric meditations out of the most rudimentary materials, squawky keyboards mostly, reinforced by the steady thwack of drum machines and occasional bits of guitar. Over the first two albums, the self-titled debut in 2008 and last year’s Earth Grid, Osbourne kept his compositions concise and disciplined. No track on the debut lingered much past the three and a half minute mark. Earth Grid‘s compositions topped out at just over five minutes. And most, if not all, of these staticky, hypnotic cuts relied on beats to keep them moving.

With Improvisations, originally released as a cassette tape in 2010 by Imminent Frequencies, Osbourne has left movement behind. Three long tracks sprawl over the disc’s half-hour duration, all alike enough to blend into one another, none especially tethered to rhythm.

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zomes - improvisations (album preview) by experimedia


I also reviewed the first Zomes album for Dusted.

Zomes

SEcond album from Asa Osborne's non-Lungfish, looped keyboard project is pretty awesome.

Thrill Jockey just posted a free mp3 to whet your interest...it's called "Openings"

There are also some shows coming up, mostly with also excellent Skull Defekts and Mountains:

Mar 31 Chicago, IL The Hideout w/The Skull Defekts, Mountains
Apr 1 Pittsburgh, PA Howler's Coyote Cafe w/The Skull Defekts
Apr 2 Buffalo, NY Soundlab w/The Skull Defekts, Mountains
Apr 3 Brooklyn, NY Littlefield w/The Skull Defekts
Apr 4 Boston, MA Great Scott w/The Skull Defekts
Apr 5 Providence, RI Machine With Magnets w/The Skull Defekts
Apr 6 Scranton, PA Embassy Vinyl w/The Skull Defekts
Apr 7 Philadelphia, PA Danger Danger Gallery w/The Skull Defekts
Apr 8 Baltimore, MD Floristree w/The Skull Defekts
Apr 9 Chapel Hill, NC Nightlight w/The Skull Defekts
Apr 10 Knoxville, TN The Pilot Light w/The Skull Defekts
Apr 11 Atlanta, GA The Earl w/The Skull Defekts
Apr 12 Asheville, NC Harvest Records w/The Skull Defekts



I reviewed the first Zomes a while ago...let's see, here's a link.

Zomes

So I wrote to the PR guy at Holy Mountain to ask exactly what instruments are played on this really, quite good, trippy, mesmeric solo album from Asa Osbourne. The liner notes are, to put it kindly, terse. And this PR guy says, well, you're the writer. What does it sound like? And I said, fine, it sounds like baritone sax, is that okay with you? But really it doesn't...Here's my Dusted review, up today.


Zomes
Zomes
Holy Mountain

Zomes, in case you didn’t know, are structures built out of non rectangular polyhedrons – like triangles, pentagons, hexagons and so on. The best-known one is Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome, but you can build one yourself, any time. There’s a company in Colorado that sells Zomes kits for children as young as seven.


More to the point, Zomes is also a musical project from Lungfish guitarist Asa Osborne. It’s not clear, actually, what the link is between Zomes and Zomes, or whether Osbone has spent time with the color coordinated dowels and sockets of polyhedral construction. (He is a visual artist, so you can’t rule it out.) However, it seems just barely possible to make a connection. This sound is droning and fuzzy, certainly, without the hard geometrical edges that you might expect. Yet it is built out of small, irregular musical ideas, repeated kaleidoscopically and creating vast, improbable constructions of light and tone.

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