Lozk

Lozk is a Columbian – first thoughts have to be the cliché of Latin sounds right? He is actually an audio-visual artist who specialises in electronic music and digital imaging and I don’t think there is a single cliché on the whole of the 40 minutes this album gives you.

Most of the music is electronic in origin but there are three numbers where he takes a single instrument – ‘Twilight Run’ features piano, ‘Requiem Machine’ is vocal and ‘Aquarium’ a Spanish guitar – and takes it to places that were never the intended landing zone – and to brilliant result. The tuned and twisted piano on ‘Twilight Run’ uses extensive manipulation of the strings a la Cardew and he creates a piece that paints dark and dense pictures but there is also a skittish edge to the music, images that are almost in full relief but try and hide in the shadows – this is music that invites and almost requires a sense of visual imagery to describe it.

There are elements of the Avant Garde – Stockhausen and La Monte Young come to mind as well as Cardew - but there are also touches of the fetishistic library of sounds that have been the mainstay of some metal music; the genius here is the light touch on the extreme elements.
He is also working very much in the genre of the Aphex Twin/Orb/Chemical Brothers but with less focus of the rhythmic and a greater sense of visuality from the music.

All of these tracks are written by Lozk apart from ‘Des pas sur la niege’ by Debussy and his sympathetic treatment of the piece creates something rather wonderful.

Overall, a fabulous release and one of the most involving albums I’ve heard this year – he is due here in May and June and it will be fascinating to see him live.