Splashgirl and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe - More Human

by Adrian Janes

published: 29 / 10 / 2024

Splashgirl and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe - More Human

Label: Hubro Music
Format: CD

Transatlantic collaboration of Norwegian jazz trio Splashgirl and American vocalist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe is a largely successful navigation of melody and improvisation.

Review

For reasons unknown, ‘More Human’ has only been released this year although the tracks were recorded during a week in late 2021. Time was not the only hurdle this project has encountered. Owing to Covid restrictions at that time, American singer/sound artist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe and producer Randall Dunn couldn’t work directly with the Norwegian trio Splashgirl as originally envisaged, so files and comments were exchanged back and forth, within the mutual discipline of the previously mentioned timeframe. The result is a somewhat improvised affair which, taken overall, is more successful than not in engaging the emotions. ‘Leaner’ is centred upon sonorous piano chords swept about by cymbals. As proves typical of the album, there is an initial sense of delicate hesitancy as notes are picked out and drums gently beaten. Complemented by synth, it’s a relatively short piece that still manages to create a lingeringly beautiful melancholy. A cover of Talk Talk’s ‘Taphead’ follows. With a line-up of piano, double bass and drums, plus electronic instruments, Splashgirl’s style is at heart one of improvisational jazz, but usually not so much so that they lose all grasp of melody. Certainly on this track Andreas Stensland Løwe’s playing is richly melodic, well supported by Jo Berger Myhre ‘s bass and Andreas Lønmo Knudsrød’s brushed drums. The strangest element of the track is Robert Lowe’s vocals, a weird moaning like a diffident David Thomas. He also features on ‘Afterlife Like’, but although that apparently features his own lyrics his curious vocal style remains such as to surpass the Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser at her most enigmatic. The centre of the album, not least because of its 11 minutes plus length, is ‘Landfiller’. Though not divided so obviously, there is almost a sense that it is a piece of two halves: the first few minutes, where delicate notes are punctuated by a sort of foghorn sound and crashes of thunder, conjures up visions of a port in a storm, deepened by dark piano notes, electronic sounds and wordless vocals. But with the entry of brisk jazzy drums and bass, coupled with Løwe’s piano, a feeling of cohesion and increasing drama takes over, before concluding with piano and distorted voices that suggest Ligetti. From an unpromisingly abstract beginning, ‘Landfiller’ ends up at an oddly beautiful place. The title track of ‘More Human’ allegedly “explores the role of humanity in a society increasingly reliant on technology”. But with the instrumental blend being much the same as elsewhere, apart from the addition of organ and a greater prominence for the bass, it’s hard to see why this track any more than the rest should be heard as focusing on such concerns. Concepts aside, it’s a slow and thoughtful piece, almost as if the listener is discovering the music alongside the musicians. But it also suffers to some extent to a perhaps unavoidable tendency to meander at times, as occurs on other tracks and most glaringly on ‘Enthropist’, the concluding piece. A quick online and old school hard copy search (I.e. a dictionary) suggests that the word enthropist doesn’t actually exist outside the confines of this album. But if it’s something to do with the state of disorganisation that is entropy then it’s sadly appropriate, being a directionless mess of scuttling drums, assorted effects, piano and bass – decomposed instead of composed. Taking both themselves and most listeners outside the limits of a comfort zone, ‘More Human’ at its best shows how music from many instruments and technologies can still touch the heart – an organ which, after all, requires electricity in order to keep beating.