Space Music in the Rainforest, Another World on Earth: Ariel Kalma- Osmose (1978)

In 1977, Richard Tinti ventured into the Borneo rainforest endowed with sound equipment and a mission and emerged with a fantastic wealth of field recordings- insects, bird calls, war drums, and the thick cosmic echoes of the jungle. So immersively dense are they, I suspect they could easily stand up on their own, but instead, Tinti bestowed his treasures upon Ariel Kalma, who used them as a foundation upon which to build a New Age cosmic masterpiece. Utilizing the sounds of the rainforest as structure for richly meditative, wonderfully trippy soundscape explorations, Kalma weaves a sonic universe that is oppressive yet welcoming, at once alien and organic, and massive. Monolithic.

Using treated saxophone, synths, harmonium, flute, and drum machines, Kalma keeps the sound warm, deep, and wide. At times similar to some of the more ambient Kraut bands (Edgar Froese's Epsilon in Malaysian Pale certainly springs to mind, as does Popol Vuh), this is "New Age" music in the main- and there ain't a thing wrong with that- but it's so powerful, so textured and intense, that it would sort of make an incredible companion piece to Ya Ho Wha's Penetration: An Aquarian Symphony, another sort of New Age-y conceit taken to awe-inspiring apocalyptic heights.



This thing has been floating around the blog-o-forest for a while now, so I wouldn't be surprised if y'all had already gotten on this, but I just wanted to throw my hat in the ring and make sure you heard it. If you got the bread and the inclination, please pay Kalma a visit and purchase the merchass straight from him. The dude has magic inside him.