I had a major brain-fart the first time I met Robert Lowe; he was tending bar at the Empty Bottle in Chicago and I didn’t make the connection that he was the same guy I’d seen fronting 90 Day Men just a few days earlier. Ah, youth and drunkeness — it does some weird shit to the temporal lobe. After 90 Day Men called it quits in 2004 or so, Lowe spent about a millisecond playing with TV on the Radio but the arrangement didn’t stick. In hindight, 90 Day Men wasn’t a great container for Lowe’s weird, intense energy and free-form ruminations; the guitar and loop-based drone he’s been exploring solo under the Lichens moniker is much more interesting. Both Lichens records to date — 2005’s The Psychic Nature of Being and last year’s Omns — were recorded, without overdubs, as extensions of Lowe’s improvised live performances. Check out this amazing clip, captured in a small club in France in ‘07, where Lowe finds his groove and releases himself like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan:

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