Chuck Soo-Hoo is back as Ki Oni, and honestly, it’s just in time, because I’ve forgotten all about elephants.
Loxodonta africana is the scientific name for the African bush elephant, also the “largest living terrestrial animal,” if Wikipedia is to be believed (and why wouldn’t it be?). Ki Oni’s previous release was titled Elephas, so I’m sensing a theme here with that and Loxodonta (Pyramid Blood).
I haven’t been to the zoo in forever (despite being a member), so these wonderful beasts have slipped from my mind, focused solely upon by conservationists and elephant lovers other than me, a nebulous spiritual conflagration that only connects its psychic tendrils to me when I consciously perceive it. Like what’s happening now.
Maybe the tendrils got there first and they’re CAUSING me to think about it …
No, that’s not it – Ki Oni sent me a tape, and I was like, “Oooh, elephants!” It’s all Ki Oni.
Loxodonta is all Ki Oni, except when it’s not (more on that in a sec), his “exquisitely blossoming” looped exotica emanating in “endlessly cascading waves of bliss.” There is a special ear, here, that Chuck Soo-Hoo turns to the melody of nature, and he internalizes and translates it before communicating to us the beauty in sound that we didn’t even know we needed to hear. The brilliant color of the savanna morning sky is set to song, illuminating the free, natural, unfettered lives of the local fauna, Loxodonta africana, loping unperturbed in their environment.
Not a zoo. But hey, that’s the only place I can go for this, OK?
Even when Ki Oni tackles Electric Sound Bath, re-editing their track “Billowing Light” to close out Loxodonta, it feels natural, like it belongs. Ki Oni has put a personal stamp on everything here, repurposing “infinite daybreak on the eternal horizon” for your ears. That’s a neat, maybe psychic (?), trick.
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