CHOIRS OF THE EYE

After reading so many good reviews I decided to try Kayo Dot without having ever heard of Maudin Of The Well (And I still didn't yet). I needed many listens to start understanding their music that's really not easy.

What confused me is the track order: if only the fantastic "The Manifold Curiosity" was the opener! In its first minutes this epic track is mainly acoustic with some electronic background noises. It's like they are saying "Hey guys, we are from NYC". The guitar and the vocals are mellow like Simon and Garfunkel or Kings of Convenience even if it's clear that the music is about to go elsewhere, and when it leaves Central Park to reah Alpha Centauri the rationale behind the noisy parts that I initially founded harsh and not pleasant on Marathon became clearer.

Yes, it's experimental, but there's a lot of Jazz behind, even when at the end of the mentioned "Manifold" it seems to turn into Industrial Metal.

This is an album of contrasts, too. The disharmonic notes of clarinet over a clean melodic classical cuitar on Wayfarer is an example. I remember a new-wave band of the 80s, the Felt. The Kayo Dot's acoustic parts are quite similar to them, but the discordant parts remind me to some classical authors of the last century. However, Wayfarer is a fantastic track between jazz and classic specially in the second part, after the few seconds of silence that divide it in two.

After those two tracks let's relsiten to the whole. Now Marathon has a sense. The chaos is not unstructured, The alternance of silence, noise and jazzy moments is now able to capture my attention. The french horn and its low-pitch and dark sound creates the right athmosphere that leads to the explosion, then silence, then chaos underlined by the drums. I still find a little disturbing the excessive distortion on the guitar as it causes a sort of background noise. It's the same "Industrial noise" that I don't like much in Semuth, but it appears to be functional and increases the gap between the noisy and the jazzy parts.

"The Antique" seems quite similar, but it's probably because I'm not yet inside the Kayo Dot's music and I can't fully appreciate it.

Whoever is familiar with Krautrock or psychedelic will be facilitated. Being used to catch little variations means attention to particulars and can help in getting familiar with this band. So even if this is an excellent album I should rate it three stars only, as it's not for ANY prog collection. However we proggers are open-minded enough, so I can rate it with the number of stars that I think it really deserves.