StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe's modular sounds

This week, let's take a look at some videos featuring multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, who will be in St. Louis next week to perform in a concert presented by New Music Circle on Saturday, February 24 at Urb Arts.

Born in 1975, Lowe grew up in Kansas City and began playing bass and singing in post-punk and rock bands as a teenager. After joining the "math rock" band 90 Day Men and moving to Chicago to be closer to their base of operations, in the mid-2000s Lowe began giving solo performances of just his voice and modular synthesizer, sometimes using the pseudonym Lichens.

Now based in Brooklyn, Lowe subsequently has worked with a wide range of artists and musicians, including Ben Russell, Ben Rivers, Rose Lazar, Hisham Akira Bharoocha, Tarek Atoui, Ben Vida, Mark Borthwick, Lucky Dragons, Alan Licht, Michael Zerang, Doug Aitken, Patrick Smith, Monica Baptista, Lee Ranaldo, White/Light, Kevin Martin, Chris Johanson, Tyondai Braxton, David Scott Stone, Genesis P-Orridge, Rose Kallal, and more.

In addition to his solo performances, he still plays with the experimental metal band Om, and in recent years also has begun collaborating with filmmakers and videographers, adding a visual element to his live performances.

Here in St. Louis, he'll be playing unaccompanied, and you can see and hear an example of one of Lowe's solo sets in the first video up above, which was recorded in July 2017 at the Berkeley Arts Museum in Berkeley, CA.

After the jump, you can see another full performance by Lowe, recorded November 4, 2016 at the Renaissance Society in Chicago in conjunction with an exhibition of work by artist Ben Rivers.

Next is a piece called "We Echo Now His Love," recorded in April 2016 at the Sonambient Barn, an eighteenth-century stone barn in Barto, Pennsylvania that house metal sculptures/instruments devised by artist Harry Bertoia.

That's followed by another full set, from 2014 at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and then by an interview video from the 2017 Brighton Modular Meet in England, in which Lowe discusses his creative process and use of modular synths.

The next-to-last video is sort of a lecture and demonstration of his gear by Lowe, recorded in 2016 at Superbooth, a modular synth exposition held in Berlin, Germany. The final clip is a recording of a discussion on "universal musics" led by Lowe at "Machines in Music," an event held in October 2015 in NYC.

For more about Robery Aiki Aubrey Lowe, read his 2014 interview with The Quietus and this interview published in December 2017 on the website of the Museum of Art and Design.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...