KALMA, ARIEL - OSMOSE (LP)

"An amazing Krautrock / nature hybrid masterwork. Warm washes of synthesizer, tribal war drums and drones galore all mixed with the sounds of the rainforest, crickets, frogs, even flies - Osmose was originally released in 1978 and found minimalist composer Ariel Kalma using all manner of keyboards, saxophone, harmonium, delays, effects, even circular breathing, to compose gorgeously minimal, softly spacey slow drifting ambient soundscapes, which were then mixed with the sounds of the rainforest (recorded by Richard Tinti). But unlike new age meditational music, this wasn't just music layered on top of random bits of field recordings, Kalma actually composed and mixed, edited and arranged his compositions to work with and within the sounds of the rainforest. Abstract melodies and warm chordal swirls, simple tribal war drums, perfectly blended with the calls of crickets and frogs and cicadas, the falling rain, birdsongs, flies, and all the sounds of the jungle forest. It sounds almost as if, while walking through the forest, you'd be just as likely to stumble across a bunch of analog synthesizers basking in a sunny glade or a wheezing harmonium perched in low hanging branches as you would frogs gathered by the edge of the stream. Sounds strange, but that's how interconnected the natural sounds are with Kalma's compositions." (label info)