Utrecht resident Thijs Kuijken is not exactly a city dweller. The music he makes under his alter ego I Am Oak is connected to nature. Like the cover of Osmosis, which contains his own photos of unspoiled natural beauty, his visual songs also refer literally or metaphorically to caves, rocks, plants and tundras. Pastoral tranquility resounds on his sixth studio album, but it can also suddenly be cut
… through by a thunderstorm that erupts in the song Swells, for example, in the form of a heavily distorted guitar. In addition, nature person Kuijken sometimes digs into himself and wonders why he cannot settle down in the human world. "The trouble in me is me," he muses in Tundra. Above all, Osmosis is most like a documentary for the ears in which nature in all its beauty, cruelty and bombast are revealed. (MR)more