COYOTE

At this point, Kayo Dot has become more akin to chamber rock outfit expanding 20th century composer's ideas in a 'rock' oriented setting. Coyote sounds like a nightmare happening in the space between existence and non-existence. Bookended by beautiful manifestations of pure despair, Kayo Dot bombards the listener with music plucked straight from a jazz club in hell.

The composition explores the emotional distress of a close friend of the band who suffered through a terminal illness. i don't know the details of the illness, nor do I have any desire to. Personally, I have a close connection to cancer patients. This album perfectly adheres to the utter horror made all too concrete in the waning moments of a cancer patient's life. Cancer destroys life unlike a gunshot or a heart attack, without their sense of finality. One dying from cancer simply seems to fade away. Like the world has suddenly just forgotten about them, all memory of them fading from the world's consciousness, with their bodies following suit and similarly disappearing, becoming nothing, becoming afterthought. Listen to this album. You'll feel a little bit of the same thing. It's like Toby managed to capture that feeling, bottle it, and encode it digitally.

Kayo Dot get better with every album. Perhaps even more importantly, they progress and develop with every album. Each release shows a different bag of tricks. Tim Byrnes is magical here. Similarly, Toby has contributed one of the all time best bass performances. His bass provides the life-blood for the composition, throbbing like a living heart and moving the rest of the music along with it. Buy this now.

Highlights: -The wind instruments at the beginning of Whisper Ineffable setting the tone for the entire piece, manipulating the listener like a marionette. -Toby's bass in Abyss Hinge 2. It breathes life into the piece like God into Adam. -Toby's utterance of 'love' in Cartogram Out of Phase. Heartbreaking