Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe

Manifestations in the Shadow of an Uncertain Land

published in The Wire No.509, London, 2026

Excerpt

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The third and longest piece “At Punishment Park” pushes past vocality and into percussivity, brimming with modular synth accents. An extended section is disturbingly claustrophobic, as if the listener is trapped inside a metallic prison cage. Flanged textures and clay-tapped timbres intensify these carceral sonics. I thought I was reading too much into an imagined reference to Peter Watkin’s pseudo-doco crack-down of youthful radicals by the National Guard, Punishment Park (1971), but Lowe’s notes cite it as a reference. Punishment Park was scored by esteemed drummer Paul Motian, whose textural percussive playing takes Varèse’s Desserts and shatters it into abrasive shards, matching the Mojave Desert where Punishment Park was filmed. It often sounds electronic, but Motian’s extended techniques match the unworldly reality of a hyper-oppressive regime. “At Punishment Park” might be an ‘imaginary score’ to the film, but its dynamic form images a contemporary world through Lowe’s potent practice..

Text © Philip Brophy. Images © respective copyright holders.