Thing of the Day
KAYO DOT in Europe, UK this week
February 12th 2011.
Heads up - Kayo
Dot in the UK this week: the
Kayo Dot European tour reaches the UK on Sunday, starting with Brighton
(by adventurous south coast promotors Tatty Seaside Town).
They're playing Liverpool instead of Bristol - here's the
updated listings
The January/February European tour is a package featuring
Kayo Dot, Tartar Lamb, and Jeremiah Cymerman
Here's the UK dates, the full European tour listing is at www.kayodot.net
13-Feb: UK, Brighton @ Hector's
House
14-Feb: UK, Liverpool @ Don't Drop the
Dumbells / The Picket
15-Feb: UK, London @ Vortex (with Bilbao Syndrome)
16-Feb: UK, Birmingham @ Hare and Hounds
17-Feb: UK, Manchester @ Islington Mill
18-Feb: UK, Leeds @ The Well
Kayo
Dot released a magnificent EP a couple of
months-ago, entitled Stained
Glass, available from Hydra
Head - more info from www.kayodot.net,
and loads of music to stream and download on the 'audio' page...
in fact, here's three extracts from their debut 'Choirs of the Eye' (Tzadik):
Marathon
The
Manifold Curiosity
Wayfarer
Not sure if Kayo Dot's depth and delicacy have been captured live on video yet, but this one's not bad:
...and the Organ reviews of the two most recent Kayo Dot albums
(28th April 2010)
KAYO DOT - Coyote
(Hydrahead) - Disregarding any defining line between
contemporary
classical composition and rock band, Kayo Dot make music that unravels,
unspools in its own time, with its own pace, its own huge scope.
There's
nobody quite like them (if you discount the closely related Maudlin of
the Well), yet Coyote sounded like completely different band at first
listen.
And then.. of course this is Kayo Dot, who else could this be? But this
is a Kayo Dot in a dark, dark place. Still meandering through extended,
intense thought processes, still evolving instrumental passages that
take
you to vocalist/composer Toby Driver's furious or gentle vocal
destinations
- except that the peaks of raging intensity or delicate, sunny
sensuality
of earlier works are entirely absent. Coyote is
full of a different
intensity entirely: crushing anxiety, complex, slippery menace,
physical
pain. It feels like a physical struggle, and that it's going
to break
out into something familiar, to release from holding back, but the
claustrophobia
just ebbs and flows until it gains its own logic and beauty.
And
of course, because this is Kayo Dot, it is beautiful - an exquisite
balance
of violin and synth and classical instrumentation with guitar and a
gorgeously
alive, expressive bass that sometimes festers and growls, the whole
integrated
effortlessly with drums (from superb ex-Time Of Orchids drummer Bodie).
In Abyss Hinge II: The Shrinking Armature, there
are passages of
what is surely Leslie-speaker distorted trumpet or sax, and organ,
which
sound magnificently like a lost 
prelude to A Plague Of
Lighthouse Keepers.
Few bands have ever been brave enough to take on this amount of space
and
distance, and to combine orchestration and proper jazz and
improvisation
and rock dynamics with such seeming effortlessness. Eighties
misfits
Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic come close (interesting that Toby Driver was
also based in Boston at one time), and there are just hints of
pre-sellout
Efterklang. (Previous Kayo Dot and MotW albums reference Led Zeppelin
occasionally
- but there's none on this one). At times it becomes a kind of
psychedelia
in the purest sense of music as altered state, twisted like Comus or
early
King Crimson. Other moments point to Driver's background in doom and
metal
(but then you could be picking apart these musicians' myriad influences
all day). In Opeth's wildest dreams, they hope they sound
almost
as good as Kayo Dot.
Driver's previous lyrics for both this band and Maudlin of the Well have always been enjoyable, a brilliant mix of the shamelessly romantic, mystic and surreal, and it's a shame I don't have them yet at time of writing. Coyote is about the death of a musician friend, which goes a long way to understanding the dark and painful feel of this album. The five tracks (including two over ten minutes long) work together, maybe more so than any of their previous albums. A linked journey that reveals ever more layers of detail on each listen, and yes, it climbs slowly to the cathartic release that Kayo Dot can deliver like no other. There's nothing crude or obvious about this: as with every moment of this album, it's subtle, and deep, deep, and absolutely honest in it's emotions. In fact, it's kind of dawning on me how great Coyote is - and that's great as in memorable, as in a great work, something that will take time to sink in to many people's consciousness just as it takes time to sink in to any of Kayo Dot's music. When it comes time to compile those end of year best album lists, Coyote will be right there at the top... www.kayodot.net or www.myspace.com/kayodot
(from ORGAN #267> JULY 24th '08):
ALBUM
OF THE WEEK
KAYO DOT - Blue
Lambency
Downward (Hydrahead) - This is not fast food. This is a
banquet of rare
ingredients and exquisite constructions, to be digested over days, not
minutes. It's sweet and beautiful and not for the
faint-hearted,
dripping with opiate languor in one place, curling into unsettling,
chilling
landscapes (landscapes out of the films of Jan Svankmeyer and Brothers
Quay) in another, building slowly slowly to a peak.
Kayo Dot - for all
intents the work of composer/multi-instrumentalist Toby Driver - are
masters
of the slow boil, the long journey. Listen to the samples of
their
2003 album Choirs Of The Eye on kayodot.net and you'll hear ranging
avant-thrashouts
that melt down to whispered poetry, and woozy, heat-hazed songs that
gradually
work up to thunderous metal denouements like an escalating arms race
no-one
can remember starting. Kayo Dot are, in common with any truly
great
creativity, almost impossible to describe.
A good deal of Blue Lambency Downward can be
compared to the more
abstract passages of A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers,
the legendary
twenty-minute masterwork of Van Der Graaf Generator. Kayo Dot
are
that avant, psychedelic sensibility concentrated and amplified; lusher,
more sensual. Their contemporaries are Time Of Orchids, equal in
mastery
of the romantic and hypercomplex. The lyrics are magnificently obtuse,
a fever dream of Dada and Coleridge, both absurd and deliciously
tactile,
and it all comes together on the opening, title track's swooning,
stuttering,
richly strange climax. Driver's elegant voice is endlessly
listenable,
part torch singer, recognisably from a rock background and wrapping
effortlessly
around some edgy melodics, hinting at middle-eastern quarter-tone
singing.
Violin (from, sax, clarinets, malletophone, organ and synthesizers take
equal parts to the band setup (and the synth throbs and drones are
treated
as part of the arrangements in a way few if any have succeeded
with).
Indeed, despite echoing the more psychedelic, stranger moments of Led
Zeppelin
this is barely a rock band, more a contemporary classical work that can
stand up to the high standards of that world, crossing over into
classic
and avant jazz. Having said that... The Awkward Wind Wheel is
the
heaviest, most straight-up piece on this album, showing The Mars Volta
how it should be done (apparently Kayo Dot are worshipped by
contingents
of Mars Volta campfollowers) and maybe referencing Voivod a
little.
Elsewhere, Right Hand Is The One I Want and the
opening build of
Symmetrical
Arizona meander into limpid backwaters, easy to get lost in
if you're
in a hurrying mood. That's the essence of listening to Kayo
Dot,
and Driver's previous band Maudlin Of The Well: take the whole journey
with them, wherever it goes go with it - the getting there makes the
peaks
and depths that much sweeter - www.kayodot.net
