KALMA, ARIEL - Osmose

"2022 repress. Born and raised in Paris, Ariel Kalma studied electronics, computer science, music and art in Paris, he performed with several bands, then toured the world and visited Europe, Japan, India, Eastern Canada, and parts of the USA. Apart from rhythm & blues, pop and jazz, he acquired assorted experiences in Middle Age French, electro-acoustic, and modal music. All the travels broadened Ariel's musical horizons tremendously; listening to and playing with different styles, people, and instruments, intricate scales, techniques, timing and rhythms. After learning circular breathing from a snake charmer in India, Ariel practiced it on soprano sax (for many sleepless nights) in the basement of a cathedral in New York, when he was not playing upstairs on the large harmonium. Returning to France in late '76, Ariel could include those endless notes into his own long-delay-effect system with which he toured, playing solo concerts. Ariel contributed to the birth of (then) new music genres: minimalist, space, ambient, new age, and electronic. In 1977, Paris, Ariel Kalma was preparing an album of new music. Through an INA connection, Ariel was recommended to Richard Tinti, who had just come back from Borneo (Papua New Guinea) with hours of rainforest ambiences in high quality recordings (on a Nagra recorder). To their amazement, birds and keyboards, flutes and crickets, saxophones and frogs, war drums and (very vintage) drum machines had much in common in terms of pitch, rhythms, effects (i.e. crickets and fast flanged synthesizer). Ariel decided to blend his new compositions with the rainforest atmosphere, and thus Osmose was created."