Kayo Dot - Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Maya Shenfeld's expansive, kaleidoscopic music is as illuminating as it is exquisite. Classically trained, Shenfeld has fast grown into one of contemporary music's most exciting, vital voices. Every aspect of her dazzling, multifaceted output interrogates the way we experience the world around us - be it solo microtonal explorations, site-specific installations or commissions for leading New Music ensembles. Shenfeld balances orchestral ambition and compositional rigor with the joy of noise, and granular detail. Under the Sun provides a daring expansion of that musical vision, a series of pieces exploring change and repetition, deep time and the ephemeral moment, equilibrium and imminent threat. Composed and produced between a studio in Berlin and on site at one of the world's deepest marble quarries in Portugal, the album's powerful sounds are a meditation on the natural world, wrestling with the looming threat of catastrophe and crisis, and the power of community and collaboration to enact change. Our environment is more than just an abstract theme, it is interwoven into Under The Sun's very sonic DNA. Field recordings taken deep within the still-active quarry in Portugal were recorded, quite literally, under the scorching sun on one of the hottest days on record in the country. Shenfeld extracted sounds from this scarred, deeply mined landscape, and threaded these samples into rich arrangements of synthesizers and acoustic instruments. The atmospheres of Under the Sun evoke that push and pull through an eclectic and rich sonic palette, from the sacred sounds of the organ at St Matthew's Church, to the ethereal voices of the Ritter Youthchoir conducted by Ann- Kristin Mayr. Reflections of her punk and electronic forays bubble up in a collaborative composition with Emptyset's James Ginzburg, summoning raw, primal energy. Under the Sun encourages us to explore how we

On their eleventh regular studio album, InchEvery Rock, Every Half-Truth under ReasonInch, conceptual and experimental artists Kayo Dot commemorate the 20th anniversary of InchChoirs of the EyeInch by reuniting the original line-up. This bold musical statement from the ever-changing composer and mastermind Toby Driver marks both a return and a progression from the band's seminal debut by revisiting the compositional practices that defined it while pushing forward into uncharted territory. Rejecting traditional rock structures and the more predictable contours of metal, InchEvery Rock, Every Half-Truth under ReasonInch shapes a sound that feels familiar and alien at once, where custom-designed microtonal organs and guitars weave an effort to reconcile the impossible tension between past and future. Moving away from the typical emphasis on low-end frequencies, it floats instead in the upper spectrum, where the textures become more fragile, more intimate, and more abrasive and terrifying. This Kayo Dot album is also haunted by the ghost of a future to come the spectre of AI-generated creativity. The increasing presence of artificial composition, predictive modelling, and algorithmic aesthetics casts a long shadow over all creative work today, which caused Driver to write in ways that resist prediction, to compose music that does not reveal itself to pattern recognition. Much of the album is an effort to move against the grain of legibility, to make something that slips from the grasp of systems designed to anticipate us. After the split of much loved MAUDLIN OF THE WELL, Toby Driver formed the avant-garde music project Kayo Dot as a new outlet for his burgeoning creativity in 2003. In the following 20 years, Kayo Dot released an impressive number of full-lengths, EPs, splits, and live recordings that are all marked by considerable stylistic differences and a wide array

2CD book (hardcover, 18x18cm, 48 pages) with enhanced artwork, a full chapter of the novel that serves as the album's thematic basis, and feat. The 6-track bonus CD InchPurityInch with renditions of InchBlasphemyInch tracks by Wet Math. Kayo Dot, the endlessly eclectic project, spearheaded by composer and producer Toby Driver, was formed in 2003 by the members of the legendary aethereal metal band, Maudlin of the Well, marking a giant-inspired evolutionary leap. Since then, Kayo Dot's muse has shown it's face through slow and massive cascades of guitars and violins, and soundscapes spanning from InchBi**hes BrewInch-inspired tripped-out goth fusion to hyper-fast, angular and atonal suicidal black metal. Kayo Dot's members and collaborators come from a huge range of backgrounds; DIY punk kids to the most erudite conservatory-educated New York performing musicians. Driver's list of collaborators includes names like Randall Dunn (Wolves In The Throne Room, Myrkur, Sunn 0))), Secret Chiefs 3 (Trey Spruance of Mr. Bungle), John Zorn, and G. Stuart Dahlquist (Burning Witch, Asva), among many others. The diversity of musicians feeds Kayo Dot's ability to wind, twist, and leave you wanting with no ceiling on how it will evolve, while creating sounds that are both timeless and contemporary. Now fifteen years on, Kayo Dot's new album, InchBlasphemyInch, is once again based on an allegorical story by Jason Byron. It explores greed, especially politically, and surrounds three characters on their search for treasures; only to be destroyed by the very treasure they sought - a sleeping girl with terrible power named Blasphemy. Produced by Randall Dunn (who helmed Kayo Dot's InchHubardoInch, InchCoyoteInch, and InchBlue Lambency DownwardInch), is Kayo Dot's most forthright statement ever; directly confronting the world at-hand, foregoing the encouraged escapism found ubiquitously thr