penitent, turbulent, multiplex!

I’m sitting in the dark here as the last notes of Stained Glass have just faded.

I’ve had the CD for a week now, and I’ve been listening to the 20-minute piece a couple of times a day. I just now decided to shut everything off and _really_ listen to it.

Kayo Dot really has 2 categories of music for me: Blue Lambancy Downward, and everything else. I liked Blue Lambancy Downward, but I _really_ like everything else. I’d say this fits into the latter category.

The first few moments of Stained Glass have this feeling of teenage awkwardness. The lyrics don’t seem to fit the tone, and it sounds like Toby is channeling Death Cab. After this initial (and likely intentional) weird tentative period, the track hits its stride really hard.

Up until the ten minute mark, there are a bunch of different movements and buildups, and then the last half feels thematically similar and sort of drifts off into an airy conclusion.

Stained Glass sounds to me like Hell and Heaven decided to meet up for an evening stroll. Heaven is represented by the stunning variety of chime-y and bell-y sounds that form a rhythmic theme, while Hell is the spooky, raspy square wave sound of the synth. I swear there were parts in the last half that sounded like the synth was playing chunks of the Space Quest IV MIDI soundtrack. It weirded me out hardcore.

I think my favorite part of all of this is how the chimes and bells contribute a feeling of fragility and delicateness that one would associate with a stained glass window. But maybe I’m just projecting what is written on the album sleeve.

As for the lyrical content, well, I’d really like to know where Jason Byron comes up with this stuff. I’ll spend entire verses wrinkling my nose at how goofy it sounds, but the overall effect is really creepy, and every once in a while I stumble across a passage that hits me in the gut. In Stained Glass, I was particularly tweaked by the last couple of sentences:

Remember all ye that though the body falls among the years, it is as a discarded walking staff on the hedgerow beside the Path.

Anyhow, the high-level summary is that Stained Glass is a really interesting overlay of spooky and pretty, and you should try sitting in the dark and listening to it sometime.

It doesn’t look like there’s a digital download version of the album for sale yet, but you can buy the CD from kayodot.net or pre-order it from the Hydra Head store.

I woke up on Sunday morning with fumes on my breath and a digital download receipt on my macbook screen. I had a brief ‘oh no what have I done’ moment, and then I saw that the price tag was only 6 bucks.

I’d review Gridlink’s spastic masterpiece for you, but why bother — the entire album fits into one youtube video. Chang and co. compressed twelve full-length thrashy tracks into 11m:48s of playtime. It really feels like they wrote a full-length Slayer album and then just played it fast enough to fit it into that ridiculous timeframe. Despite the speed, it’s surprisingly catchy. Although I really need to stop listening to it on the subway, it makes me want to rage on all the people walking slower than me. Which is everybody, when I’m listening to this stuff.

My favorite part of the whole album is the very last sound you hear, which is this loud twanging reverb from the guitar. It sounds like the guitarist played the last chord and then fell over dead from the exertion of channeling whatever demonic thrash-spirit possessed him. Also, the blastbeats from the drummer sound a lot like when your foil tin of popcorn has reached that super-fast-poppy-temperature in the microwave.

You can listen to the whole album on youtube. For reasons I don’t understand, this dude went and split it into two videos:

Part 1
Part 2

There was a really long period of time where I would say without any hesitation at all that Kayo Dot was my favorite band. Over the last few years, though, they really started to lose me.

Ironically, I think it was the sheer output of Toby Driver’s related acts that caused this to happen. Kayo Dot isn’t the kind of band I can just listen to casually — it’s usually too discordant to have on while I’m working, it’s not angry enough to listen to at the gym, and there are very few other times of the day where I’ll have music on. So I never really paid enough attention to any particular album to feel strongly about it one way or another.

Which is why it’s always awesome when Kayo Dot comes to town. First of all, they are freaking phenomeonal live performers. Second of all, it forces me to do nothing but sit there and listen to them.

I saw Kayo Dot this past Wednesday in Toronto at Sneaky Dee’s, which was way better than the last venue I caught them at (Wrongbar, where they don’t turn the heat on because they figure the sweat of hipster nerdrage will supply the necessary thermal energy). They played a short set, because there was some douchey dance party coming up afterwards, but I was absolutely fixated for the whole 40 minutes or so that they were up there.

The setlist, as far as I can tell, was:

1. Calonyction Girl (Coyote)
2. Abyss Hinge 2 (Coyote)
3. Wayfarer (Choirs of the Eye)
4. __On Limpid Form (Dowsing Anemone)

I bought Coyote as a digital download the day it was released, and listened to it maybe 10 or 15 times. It never grabbed me. After seeing those two tracks live, I have been listening to it obsessively over the last three days. That album fucking crushes. It is really heavy on percussion in comparison to the last couple of albums, which I never noticed before, and the rhythmic pulsing of the horns is really freaky. Abyss Hinge 2 was especially monster.

Wayfarer took me into another place completely. It’s already a pretty spacey track, but the volume and density of the live performance was just incredible. I remember hearing the last notes fade and feeling like I was actually just falling back into my body. And that was only after my first drink.

On Limpid Form was definitely the performance of the night, though. It seemed an odd one to pick for a concert, firstly because I believe it’s the longest track in their discography (just shy of 20 minutes), and secondly because when I’ve listened to it before, it just feels like it doesn’t really do anything except repeat the same 20 second long theme over and over again.

Not so. The last 5 or 6 minutes of the track produce the sound that I imagine a city would make if all of its buildings simultaneously collapsed in slow motion, and when this is done in live performance, HOLY SHIT. The entire band took out these pieces of metal shrapnel and banged on them with sticks while they were still occasionally playing their own parts, which was freaking awesome.

Anyhow, seeing these guys live again reminded me that I should just pay attention to my music once in a while. You know, lie back on the couch, crank an album, close my eyes, and just _listen_ to it. I know, who has time for that shit anymore? But it’s worth it.

The opening acts were enjoyable too. GATES (mentioned in a previous post) produced some truly epic sound. They were apparently playing some solo material from the founding artist, because the actual tracks on the debut album are too processed to be reproduced live. I can only imagine what the people in the dining area downstairs were thinking as they heard the Lovecraftian nightmare that was pouring thickly out of the amps when GATES was on stage. I kinda wish I had seen it.

The second band was called Kosmograd, which really weirded me out because I _just_ started reading Burning Chrome, William Gibson’s short story collection, and I’m pretty sure it’s a story in that collection that the band draws its name from. (Kosmograd is the name of some Russian space station in this story.) They kind of confused me because if I wasn’t listening closely, they seriously sounded like the Neskimos with vocals. However, after they walked off the stage, I concluded that they were more like indie bitch rock meets Amon Amarth. But what do I know. They were entertaining.

Anyhow, the show was stellar and I’m really thankful I had the chance to catch it. If I hadn’t previously sent email to Kayo Dot to rant pathetic gushy fanboy crap at them, I never would have been put on their mailing list, and I totally would have missed this show. So ha, sometimes acting like a besotted child pays off. If Kayo Dot was on MuchMusic, I would totally be one of those glistening pustules sticking my face against the glass, screaming maniacally, and showing them my boobs.

I bought Kayo Dot’s newest EP “Stained Glass” at the show, and I’ve had a few good listens to it now. I’ll write something up about it shortly. After I’ve had a couple of more good, long, attentive listens to it, of course.

P.S. Youtube has some decent videos of Kayo Dot live performances. For example you can get some idea of what the outro to __On Limpid Form looks and sounds like here.