German minimalist musician Luka Aron is as versatile as he is talented, producing work that has been presented everywhere from Berlin super club Berghain and the Primavera Sound festival to The Royal College of Music and KW Institute for Contemporary Art. And he is an artist who wears his minimalist influences on his sleeve hosting gatherings for the practice of deep listening – the aural concentration phenomenon invented by female electronic musician and pioneer Pauline Oliveros that encourages focus on all sounds present to induce a semi-meditative state.
When it comes to the world of composition, Aron is both collaborator and soloist forming one third of Minua, a musical unit that promotes a minimalist approach blending both the electronic and acoustic. It is from this purist aesthetic that the German composer takes the lead for his solo work and while his last album, 2022’s Tinctures, revolved entirely around the zither and the pipe organ, his latest offering pushes in the opposite direction. Released by avant-garde Slovakian label Warm Winters, XV XXVII III XXI IX: Variations & Coda sees Aron dramatically expand his drone-centred soundscapes to include bass clarinet, contrabass, euphonium, foghorn organ, harpsichord, serpent, shō, and trumpet.
Comprising four individual pieces, this is not a work that you can dissect, XV XXVII III XXI IX: Variations & Coda requires attentive listening from start to finish. Truly in the Oliveros vein, this is music that is spatial while remaining highly multilayered – the sustained tones of each instrument needing to be teased apart through deep concentration. But this is no accident. While at the Royal Academy of Music, Aron studied musical physiology identifying tone combinations to provoke deep listening. His is a studied and scientific approach to music and its ability to transcend beyond the liminal.
Aron takes the helm for the synthesisers and programming – assuming control of the Buchla 200, the VCS3 synth not to mention the coding tech while a group of Stockholm-based artists accompany him on more traditional instruments. This includes CC Hennix’ Kamigaku ensemble alumni Mattias Hållsten on Japanese mouth organ or shō and Susana Santos Silva on trumpet plus Amina Hocine and her unique self-built foghorn organ. This is an experiment, and it is one that wholeheartedly succeeds in its ambition to create a music that is so uniquely intricate and mesmerising yet manages to focus the brain (and ears) completely.
Sarah Gregory
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