Welcome to The Harmonic Series, a daily(ish) music review series - exclusive to Steemit - where I’ll be discussing music across many different styles and genres from metal, to electronic music, to jazz and beyond! I’ll be talking up exciting new releases, some of my personal classics, and anything else that I think is worth checking out. Some of the reviews I share will be brand new, and some will be from my personal archives.
Today's review is one of my favorite albums of the year so far, by one of my favorite bands:
Kayo Dot - Plastic House on Base of Sky (The Flenser, 2016)
Genre: Rock, Electronic
Style: Prog, New-wave, Avant-Garde
Kayo Dot is a band like no other. Over their sizable eight album, thirteen year career, they’ve plumbed the depths of numerous styles of metal, avant-garde music, and modern composition to create unique, singular music with meticulous craftsmanship and nearly unparalleled vision. Fans of the band commonly speak in impassioned terms about their music, most commonly their debut album Choirs of the Eye, and many - myself included - cite it as one of the greatest albums of all time. After the blackened-psych-prog chaos of 2013’s 100-minute long epic Hubardo - what I consider to be one of the bands greatest works - I, among others, was perplexed with the stylistic shift of 2014’s Coffins on Io. Metal was certainly no longer the central focus as the band turned towards a more electronic and arguably retro sound, but the darkness at the core of the music remained, as the band began to once again to reshape ideas of what “metal” can be. Though Coffins was a relative non-sequitur in the bands catalogue, it grew on me as I slowly uncovered its appeal.
When Magnetism, the first single from Plastic House on Base of Sky was released, it was clear the band had committed to a shift in direction. Synths would take the center stage, and intricate multi-layered rhythm would take focus over harmony and dynamics. Frontman and composer Toby Driver expressed in an interview that metal was no longer what interested him in composition. By this point I had realized that there were plenty of bands I could come to if I simply wanted “metal.” The true value in Kayo Dot lay in Driver’s expert compositional voice, and the strongly evocative concept albums they produce. I knew that the context of Coffins would be enlightening when listening to Plastic House, and that Plastic House would in turn frame Coffins in retrospect.
The compositional language of this album takes the synthetic elements even further, and places it in stylistic territory that feels uncharted, at least by my own wide measure of musical styles. Crystalline lead synths feel like the counterpart to a duet with Driver’s mostly gentle and ephemeral vocals. Chords and pads are hazy and rich, and function as the backbone of the album’s potent melancholic mood. On Amalia’s Theme for example, the buzzing acid basslines wind and pivot with mechanically jittery drums, and funnel into the central musical theme. The mixed mode melodic theme that set the stage initially returns above a newfound harmonic pattern that adds a nauseous beauty to the aching vocal lines, brushed with just the right amount of reverb. It’s almost too easy to visualize the tracks eponymous seer “swayin' through the Hotel corridors,” intoxicated by the smoke and fumes of decay. The tracks on Plastic House depict a world of modern ruin; of short-circuited smartphones and abandoned satellites, like those that we view the eerily beautiful dead planet from on Rings of Earth. The rotation and revolution of celestial bodies are indicative of the indifference of the vast universe, as humanity lies dead: “all sleep in blue grave.”
Though some of the lyrics can be vague and obtuse, it’s clear that this album hovers around the point of destruction, with depictions of the pre- to post- apocalypse, and everything in between. All The Pain In All The Wide World ambiguously depicts people at a bar, perhaps even a club (which seems more appropriate, given the albums aesthetic qualities and mention of neon in the song) attempting to escape the cold, savage world. What happens next isn’t entirely clear, but betrayal, horror, and a sudden violent end seem to all be implied. Magnetism shows us a world of decay and desperation with vivid images of “hands like scalpels reaching out” and “landscape seeming alien in its nightmare evening.” This track is perhaps the closest the “metal” this album reaches in a traditional sense, with real drums being clear for one of the few times on the album, and distortion guitar at a relatively high volume carrying the song through turns and peaks.
For all the incredible complexity and density of the first four tracks though, what Plastic House really comes down to, like most of Kayo Dot’s music, is sheer emotional power and the unique spaces it can put you in. This is all heavily manifested in the last track - my personal favorite - Brittle Urchin. This simple 4 minute piece iterates its form three times, each time adding depth and information: once through with a delicate synth bass, then again with pristine clean guitar drenched in reverb and a solitary, somber voice. Finally, the drums enter with an oppressively hard and infectious groove like the march of time itself, and layers of synths swell behind the melancholy refrain: “I could never last, I could never last, I could never last.” The song is an anthem of weathering a never-ending storm, and my skin tingles every time I hear the lines “Darkness in the cradle of my heart will never wane / Sandstone boy in wind and rain worn down featureless.” Our protagonist has borne the the weight of all the events herein, and is ultimately and totally reduced to nothing in their wake.
In all the fantastic and vivid imagery of Plastic House on Base of Sky, one theme rings through: a deep and inescapable feeling of smallness and irrelevance to forces of unimaginable size. Something else comes out of this feeling though, something a Kayo Dot album has never really made me feel. This album feels bright in sonic-textural terms, but also in a sense of darkness so profound that it resonates loudly in the bones of anyone who can identify their own experience within its sensations, and in turn becomes something of a reassurance. Though isolation is central, it’s an isolation that we know is not ours alone. Of that, we can be sure.
To buy or stream Plastic House on Base of Sky, head over to The Flenser's Bandcamp page.
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