“In 1970 Ariel Kalma was a young saxophonist for hire, touring with Pop and Rock bands, as far away from his from Parisian home as India, while his own preferred listening included Sun Ra and Albert Ayler`s Fire Music. India and Free Jazz lead him to experiment with an improvised ReVox reel-to-reel two-track tape delay, and drones from harmonium, clarinet, dulcimer, and children`s toys. In a search for a oneness with the universe, he became a traveller, taking up Herman Hesse, vegetarianism, and learning circular breathing from a snake charmer on a hippy trail across Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and Israel. Cecil Taylor, Weather Report, and Miles Davis rubbed shoulders with Terry Riley and Charlemagne Palestine, and the Hindustani classical music of the Dagar Brothers, in Kalma`s bag of influences.

Returning to Paris he got a job engineering at Pierre Henry`s Institut National e L`audiovisual, Groupe de Recherches Musicales, the music concrete school of Luc Ferrari, Iannis Xennakis, and Bernard Parmegiani, using studio down time to produce his own “electronic ragas of the `70s”, privately pressed copies of which he sold from the back of his moped. Then he was off to New York, to study at The Arica Institute, to learn innerspace tools, and to try glimpse the impossible holy mountain that links Heaven and Earth, surviving by busking in Greenwich Village, where he met and jammed with follower traveller Don Cherry.

Back in Paris Kalma created a Dream House, a permanent sonic environment of responsive, adaptive sine-waves, and composed work for breath therapy. He moved with development groups, exploring sound as a means to spiritual growth, to enlighten and open doors. Took part in communes in castles and psychedelic star shows under planetarium domes. The quest for a music of universal harmony is central to Ariel Kalma`s story…”

I wrote the above as an intro to a review of the Ariel Kalma retrospective An Evolutionary Music, released by RVNG Intl. in 2014. The full piece is still online over at Test Pressing, but I`ve shared the non “poetic” bit here, just in case you`re in need of a little background on this incredible individual. If you require more convincing on how special Ariel is, well then check out the flick Sunshine Soup, which documents him meeting and working with Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. Something that unfolds into a really heartwarming watch.  

For a long time now Ariel has lived in Main Arm, just outside Mullimbimby, on the remote Eastern Australian coast. He`s still making music, either solo, or together with other talented folks, such as Gilbert Cohen, Sarah Davachi, Jonathan Fitoussi, Riccardo Sinigaglia, and David Zolli. In 2022 Ariel was asked to contribute to BBC Radio 3`s Late Junction, and commissioned to spark a new collaboration. This time he chose California, L.A.-based musicians Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer, whose then new, joint debut, Recordings From The Aland Islands, he was especially taken with. 

Bouncing things back and forth, in a whirl of improvisation and collage, sometimes working of Ariel`s archives from the `70s, they were asked for 20 minutes of music. However the trio proved to be so productive that the project resulted in an album they`ve called The Closest Thing To Silence. 

On the opening Ten Hour Wave, soft swells / sighs of electronics surround a rich reed, a sultry saxophone`s harmonious honk. Breathing In Three Orbits is a mediative modulation of fragmented whispers, murmurs, whose flickering increases in frequency and intensity. On the title track, busy but bucolic bionic bustle bubbles about temple chimes and ambient techno tones. Dizzy Ditty pits playful programmed patterns against Marta`s swooning viola. Spinning a serene synergy. Ecoute Au Lion is an exercise in electric counterpoint, with a Music For 18 Musicians / Steve Reich-ian rhythm. Possessing a percussive, chanted passage, section, it feels like a respectful doff of the chapeau to the `60s and `70s spiritual jazz exiles who congregated around the BYG / Actuel label in Ariel`s native Paris. A Treasure Chest perhaps refers to the harmonium at its heart, which is serenaded by a rush of robotic ripples and a choir of new age angels. 

The album as a whole seamlessly segues, moves back and forth, between electronica and classical. The treated timbres of instruments and voices also blend and blur, so that its often impossible to pinpoint where one sound / source ends and another begins. All of this effortlessly drawing the listener in. So, that for its duration, seconds and minutes stand still. 

The closing Stack Attack, spins backwards and forwards, generating a rhythmic dance / trance-inducing pulse, before dropping away to warm, wheezy, weathered drones, and a final shimmering, shining, tide of tiny shimmying tintinnabulation. 

Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu, and Marta Sofia Honer`s The Closest Thing To Silence is out now on International Anthem.