Issue 106 / Dec 2019/Jan 2020

GEOGRAPHY O
Electronic artist Lo Five
navigates us through the
terrain of his latest album
Geography Of The Abyss – a
world conjured from meditative
states and internal discovery.
Illustrated through adjoining
artwork made specifically
for the record, the Wirralbased
producer touches
on the hurtling potential
to travel even when in the
most static of states.
Geography Of The Abyss travels across the terrain
of the inner self. It’s a continuation of a theme I’ve
explored and tried to make sense of through pretty
much all of my music.
I’m endlessly fascinated with the nature of consciousness
and memory, how one colours and shapes the other. I’ve been
practising meditation on and off for around 15 years now,
and I guess that sort of inner journey of self-inquiry has been
expressed in some form on this album. I see the record as a kind
of a mirror image of my own experiences of meditation.
The album is made up of a series of live jams rather than
piecing it together on a computer; building these repetitive
loops that I could get lost in late at night, just by focusing in on
the music and tuning into feeling, or as close as possible. Taking
this approach, the album and its production is pretty much the
same as meditating; focusing your attention on an object that’s
not your thoughts until your ‘self’ falls away. This happens
naturally with any activity that requires long periods of simple
concentration, like painting or knitting for example. It’s like a
mini holiday from your mind. Therefore, the album has ended
up a more contented and intuitive record, rather than something
cerebral or wholly conceptual.
For me, meditation is about suspending that inner judge
we all have inside of us, the one that forms opinions of
situations, others and ourselves. In theory, it’s the perfect
vessel for severing the ties with contemporary capitalism
and the continual drive towards individuality. But we live in a
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