aaamusic | On 20, Apr 2011

The music of Asa Osborne forms a corpus, still evolving, that spans 30 years, growing through early projects in Southern Maryland, The Clits, and Pig, to the Baltimore song-lab of Lungfish and the sub-group The Pupils, until presently his compositions are crafted in solitude and offered to the listener as Zomes. Melody is rhythm, tone is proportion, tempo harmonizes, synchronizing with life, akin to the morphological architecture of trees, rivers, reaching from root to fruit, from mountain to sea.  Asa Osborne’s songs are artifacts of his trust in the Wisdom of Music.

Guided by the visionary guitar work of Osborne, Lungfish carved out a singular sound.  Predating the drone wave by almost a decade, the band explored modal repetition and cyclical variation. Lungfish, while not currently active, remains a highly influential band, their cult status growing to legend, clearly evident in how their catalog sells several times as many records now, as it did when the band was active.  Zomes distills these ideas and towering cyclical melodies to their essence.  Distorted keyboard melodies tumble one over the other held together by simple tape-looped drum beats.

Earth Grid, Zomes second solo album, is the culmination of Osborne’s years of exploring meditative modal models. Written, played, and recorded entirely at home on cassette tape, Earth Grid, is an intimate and intentionally primitive recording. The album was mastered by Bob Weston.  The cover art was created by Osborne whose reputation as a visual artist is growing. He has had several group and solo shows, including a show at New York’s Mountain Fold Gallery with Lungfish singer and friend, Daniel Higgs.  A fan of primitive and outsider art, Osborne’s work uses common objects to reach transformative ends.  A visual reflection of the music, the cover takes simple elements (white medical tape on black paper) and via careful placement and repetition of patterns with subtle variations creates a beautiful space transforming the simple to the infinite.

Catch them live on Sunday 22 May:  London (Shoreditch) – Fire Station Community Nursery