Splashgirl + Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
More Human
NORWAY HUBRO HUBROCD2660 (2024)
Latest release from this try-anything Norwegian band; at one point (2011, on their Pressure album), I seemed to mistake them for a jazz combo with added electronics and tape work, but now they feel more like some mutant strain of gloomy post-rock. Plenty of keyboards, electronic instruments and beats supported by fairly straightforward double-bass and drum rhythm section, played by Jo Berge Myhre, Andreas Vold Lewe and Andrea Lonmo Knudsred.
These solemn, interminable instrumentals are enhanced on this occasion by the addition of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, an American fellow who is a vocalist and, interestingly, a sound-art composer type who’s managed to get his work into the movies, including recent films such as Candyman and Sicario. Although he does sing on some tracks – the highly unusual ‘Taphead’ may surprise the unwary – what we have here is nothing so conventional as a rock band setup with a lead vocalist. This particular piece, for instance, is more of a melancholy inverted jazz ballad with strange, semi-coherent moans and mumbles, possibly expressing lines of dark poetry in places, in a highly mannered way. I think Lowe is also playing his modular synths on the album too, so may be contributing to the overall musical schema of More Human, besides being co-credited with some compositions. It seems the band went to some lengths to work with Lowe – he couldn’t get into the Norway studio because of Covid, so his parts were recorded in New York – and they value what they regard as his “touch of mysticism”.
As to the album title, which is also used for the world-weary fourth track instrumental, it’s making a direct comment on the horrors of Artificial Intelligence; Splashgirl now see the AI problem as a competition, a life-or-death struggle between man and machine, and ask questions about “what price humanity” when we now have such a high dependency on technology in society. While their pro-human response is generally upbeat, there’s no escaping the pessimistic direction reflected in the long track ‘Landfiller’. Over 11:43 minutes, we experience an endless truck-driven journey into a bleak and unforgiving landscape, where things start out bad and only get worse. The exact trajectory of mankind’s imminent doom is shown in the structure and shape of this remorseless instrumental. (22/04/2024)