Headphones on, folkz — that was a typo but I’m leaving it — because we’re diving in. Or out. Up? Or some fifth dimensional combination of them all plus time, gravity and consciousness? And if we begin with the central question, “What is float?” — in my head that’s very much asked in the vein of Funkadelic’s “What is Soul,” but you may or may not hear it that way and that’s fine — then Grace and Space‘s wildly syllabic Floatospherofonica is both instructive and cosmically worldmaking. Because without float there can be no ‘floatosphere’ from which the properties might be derived to define something as ‘floatospherophonic,’ probably something related to sound, therefore giving rise to an oeuvre or genre of ‘floatospherofonica,’ as the thing representative of the place.

Certainly the 19-minute title-track is a place to start, but it’s not actually where this collaboration between members of California-based acid experimentalists 3rd Ear Experience — Robbi Robb, credited here with guitar, bass and production, Sam Wilmore on drums and, crucially, Amritakripa on synth, what minimal vocals there are, as well as percussion and banjo — and the galaxy’s own Scott “Dr. Space” Heller, known for his synth wizarding in Øresund Space Collective, Black Moon Circle, Doctors of Space and others, as well as past teamups live and/or in-studio with the likes of JOY and Carlton Melton and KG West and on and on.

For Heller, Floatospherofonica arrives as part of an ongoing creative supernova. I asked him to send me his full discography which, thankfully, he kept and was kind enough to lend for my personal reference. A couple stats from it: First, the last time he had fewer than 10 releases out in a single year was 2018. In 2023, Heller contributed to or spearheaded 17 albums with various outfits, among them Albinö Rhino, the aforementioned Øresund Space Collective, Doctors of Space and Black Moon Circle, and extensive solo work as Dr. Space. And that’s actually down from 18 in 2022. It would be an impressively broad catalog for a lifetime. It’s more than most ever do. I am fortunate to call this man a friend.

Grace and Space isn’t the first time Robb — whose history goes back 40-plus years to South Africa’s punk underground and includes Tribe After Tribe and sundry other much-respect-to-you-sir-type collabs; which is to say I’m not trying to shine a light on Dr. Space‘s level of output in the paragraph above and discount what Robb, Amritakripa or Wilmore bring to Floatospherofonica, at all, because the truth is it’s probably the bulk of it — and Heller and Amritakripa have worked together. All three were on 2019’s Ear to Space (review here) by a unit listed as 3rd Ear Experience with Dr. Space, as well as 2021’s Danny Frankel’s 3rd Ear Experience (review here), and their shared openness to improvisation resonates through each of the album’s six pieces spread across a hypnotically-broad soundscape anchored but not defined in its 61 minutes by its two longest inclusions: “Floatospherofonica” (19:19) and “Rabjut” (13:17).

These two don’t necessarily define the rest of what surrounds. “Time Disappear” leads off, is six minutes of minimalist acid wash guitar and proggy keyboardery with the most discernably-human vocals, and the title-track follows, with “Not Ever Nowhere” offering a nine-minute meditation set to a casually kosmiche throb of a groove before the shimmer takes it to an ice planet, “Rabjut” perhaps embodying it at some point in the distant future before the more grounded feeling “Hydro Blap” gives brief repositioning ahead of the sprawling krauty drones of “Overture” at the finish. Everything is in conversation here with itself, occupying its corner of a fluid universe and letting it make sense in its own way.

Which is far enough out to circle back around to the original question at the start: What defines ‘float’ as the root of Floatospherofinica? I use the term pretty commonly in reviews, and I know when I say something floats, it’s usually referring to a feeling of something being unlatched to a clear rhythm; in the context of pieces like “Rabjut” and “Not Ever Nowhere” and the synth layers of “Overture” put as the apparent foundation of the project from Amritakripa, there is plenty throughout that meets any standard of ‘float’ I can think of to apply, but that’s not necessarily all that’s happening in its ambience, despite being a prevalent enough notion for the album to work around, maybe willfully contradict in a couple spots.

But even underneath that is the already-noted shared affinity between the two parties involved here — that’s Amritakripa and Robb and Wilmore as a group in 3rd Ear Experience in California, and Heller working in his studio in Portugal — for improvisation and for letting the music wander into its own moment of discovery as much as one can. The cinematic way “Floatospherofonica” brings in its initial keyboard line atop the windy drone behind and unfolds in movements makes me think there was some measure of plan at work, somewhere along the line, even if that’s one layer of synthesizer playing off the layer before just recorded, or Heller answering something Amritakripa is doing, maybe vice versa (I don’t know how much back and forth there was), and so on, but I assure you I don’t know that this wasn’t all just made up as it was tracked and if you told me it was, I can’t really see myself offering much of a fight either way.

The inclusion of vocals at all gives Grace and Space an identity separate from most of what Heller does, and the focus on synth pulls to the side of some of the more guitar-led output of 3rd Ear Experience, though if you’d take any of it on between that band, Grace and Space, or pretty much anything any of these cats are involved in, you should be aware you’re headed into the farther reaches of far out. I’ve said on multiple occasions — usually Friday Full-Lengths and the like — that I consider writing about Dr. Space‘s stuff a favor to myself and that’s the case here too, precisely because this project is so able to find its place as distinct from the rest of it. I don’t know that it will be an ongoing thing and I don’t know that it won’t, and while it’s playing out, I’m perfectly willing to accept the fact that some things you don’t always get to know completely and maybe that’s okay.

Also the universe is a hologram and whales are sentient. Happy trails!

Grace and Space, Floatospherofonica (2023)

3rd Ear Experience on Facebook

3rd Ear Experience on Bandcamp

Øresund Space Collective on Facebook

Øresund Space Collective on Bandcamp

Space Rock Productions website

Space Rock Productions on Facebook

Tags: 3rd Ear Experience, California, Floatospherofonica, Grace and Space, Grace and Space Floatospherofonica, Portugal

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 27th, 2023 at 8:54 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.