Aukai - Vulture (Apapachoa) [Minimal / New Age of New Age]

Aukai (Hawaiian for seafarer or traveler) is multi-instrumentalist and composer Markus Sieber. He's been making some lovely electroacoustic music for the last ten years, and shows no sign of letting up. Growing up in East Germany he leant his guitar skills to various alternative rock bands before moving to Berlin to become an actor, before a trip to Mexico opened his ears to the joys of indigenous music, and ever since he's been leading his spirit and consciousness raising music with the charango, the Andean stringed instrument.

There's a new album on the way, due on March 3rd next year called Chambers, and it's the first long player where Sieber played all the instruments. I'm also happy to report that it was recorded at Berlin audio institution the Funkhaus, where I once went to a memorable night organised by Hard Wax Records and Funktion-One, and which was one of the best sounding club nights of my life.

Perhaps it's an antidote to the long grey Berlin winter's but "Vulture" radiates minimal, new age warmth and evokes sun kissed lands, real and imagined from the off. Built around minimal, string plucked motifs that cascade relentlessly but pleasingly through the speakers, resistance is futile. There's a smile on the face of this tune, an almost new age sensibility that wishes people and the planet health and happiness and will make you do the same, but just in case some find it too cloying there's a percussive and vocal loop that sneaks in under the studio door and roots the radiant music to planet earth rather than some unobtainable utopia. If this is a statement of intent for the album then it's going to be the perfect long player to soundtrack the end of your winter hibernation.

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Playlist Companion

Find Aukai in the Slow Oddities Playlist.