Kayo Dot: Any friends or foes?

[StevegSr]

I've spent a lot of time listening to Coffins On Io lately. I must admit that Kayo are not my first choice for a spin on the turntable but eventually get there. What's your take on Toby Driver's avant-garde band?

[Morpheus]

I found Coffins to be a bit of a disappoint, the retro goth and cold wave elememts didn't do a lot for me, but in general they are an excellent band.

[Scrotum Scissor]

I found Coffins to be a bit of a disappoint, the retro goth and cold wave elememts didn't do a lot for me, but in general they are an excellent band.

100% agree. They have made some of the most exciting and genuinely progressive rock music I've encountered these past 10-15 years, and they're probably one of the bands to whom I've listened the most. But the obtuse "straightness" of Coffins didn't really sit all too well with them, IMHO. I guess one could still praise them for constantly insisting on trying new things, which of course again keeps listeners on their toes as to what comes next; an all-acoustic album, maybe - or an album merely containing short tunes etc. To me the Driver/Matsumiya/Kayo complex constitutes a progressive rock equivalent to Gira/Jarboe/Swans elsewhere.

Deep, existential and fundamentally transcendent music. Hubardo in particular is a groundbreaking mammoth work, but my absolute faves are still Coyote, Choirs of the Eye and Blue Lambency.

[karel hupjé]

Codina On Io is a bit disappointing. I prefer Hubardo, it is a killer.

[mnprogger]

I would like to enjoy them more, but I have never been all that into them like maudlin of the Well.

[Duncan Glenday]

I would like to enjoy them more, but I have never been all that into them like maudlin of the Well.

Yup.

"Friend" - but I far preferred them in their Maudlin Of The Well incarnation.

[Baribrotzer]

They're a bit of a mixed bag, and rather on and off. Toby does a number of different styles, and seems to concentrate them onto single albums, so you may get one album of extreme metal, one of lovelorn goth, one of prog, and so forth. But Hubardo was excellent - all new material, but at the same time a summing up of the band's whole career. It's one of their best releases, quite broad stylistically, and uses quite a lot of musicians from several different versions of Kayo Dot.

Unfortunately, for reasons only known to Toby, it came out principally as LPs (sold out by now, I think), plus electronic files. It had virtually no CD release, except for a very limited Japanese edition. I have a "CD version" created by downloading it as FLAC, then burning the result to CD. Doing that required the acquisition and use of several programs, and was a real headache.

[unclemeat]

Friend ! Coyote, Hubardo and Stained Glass being my faves.

[Mascodagama]

They're a bit of a mixed bag, and rather on and off. Toby does a number of different styles, and seems to concentrate them onto single albums, so you may get one album of extreme metal, one of lovelorn goth, one of prog, and so forth. But Hubardo was excellent - all new material, but at the same time a summing up of the band's whole career. It's one of their best releases, quite broad stylistically, and uses quite a lot of musicians from several different versions of Kayo Dot.

Unfortunately, for reasons only known to Toby, it came out principally as LPs (sold out by now, I think), plus electronic files. It had virtually no CD release, except for a very limited Japanese edition. I have a "CD version" created by downloading it as FLAC, then burning the result to CD. Doing that required the acquisition and use of several programs, and was a real headache.

The Flenser are reissuing Hubardo shortly - I'm told "probably" on both LP and CD.

My favourites are still Dowsing Anemone and Choirs.

[Haruspex Carnage]

Friend...fan of all incarnations...but the ones that didn't do as much for me were Gamma Knife and Stained Glass.

[Scrotum Scissor]

the ones that didn't do as much for me were Gamma Knife and Stained Glass.

Gamma Knife is their strangest release by far. I kinda like the mini-LP format and live recording authenticity principle of it, but musically it's very hard to pin down. Have to admit that although it' a beautiful package (it's vinyl only, IIRC - with the actual vinyl coming in marbly dark red/black), this is probably the one Kayo I pull out the least.

Stained Glass, however - I simply LOVE this one! The written/composed parts of it are for my money possibly the finest 'chamber rock' antics created in current age, very much adding to the sensibilities so hastily explored on Coyote. And the noisy improv actually works this time around, as opposed to that lengthy halt drone in the fourth track off Dowsing Anemone, which would have otherwise perhaps been my fave album of theirs.

I remember getting maudlin's Bath and Leaving Your Body Map on release, and while I dug them back then and still like them for what they are, it doesn't give Driver full justice to remain merely "core metal" - which, to my ears, their entire output basically ended up as.

[Scrotum Scissor]

A thing which really intrigues me about them is their ability to reproduce almost all studio faccets in a live setting, even though there are some impeccably detailed timbres and textures to retain for maximum effect. For instance when working with so many layers of microsonics and 'white noise' dimensions, it surprises me how they're still basically able to go at it the way they do, with all nuances and dynamic twists in place. Obviously you as listener can hardly discern those bits in a cheap recording (and certainly not when unfamiliar with the original version), but you can to some extent witness their meticulous attention to sheets and plan, like here when they still had Dave Bodie on drums:

[Haruspex Carnage]

i also think Maudlin's last is more or less a Kayo Dot...has the same feel.

Maudlin at large don't do it for me...too typical or something, i've tried.

[SteveSly]

I tried Coffins On Io. They are obviously very talented, but it was not really my thing.

[Udi Koomran]

Did not like Coffins
Coyote is the one for me
for some reason did not connect to Hubardo
Going to see them this week here in TLV

[Steve F.]

^ ^

They were greater than great when I saw them 5-6 years ago.

[Scrotum Scissor]

^
And you'll be hard pushed to find a YT live clip where they're not at least attempting something interesting.

As for Hubardo not being to everyone's liking, I can perfectly see how the immediate 'in-yr-face-noise-pseudo-blackmetal' appearance of it may distance some listeners, as it's a work which begs time and precious patience to be fully rewarding. Whilst releases like Coyote or Blue Lambency Downward are very "instant" in approach, the qualities of Hubardo may come across as more subtle and long-winded.

This is the kind of setting I'd like to experience them in personally, in which you can actually detect that Yusuf Lateef-influence directly:

[StevegSr]

Sorry for not clarifying my hasty post. I've only started getting into CoI just recently after initially being put off by it. It is starting to grow on me, now. But it's not close to my favorites being Stained Glass, Hubardo and Choirs.

[mnprogger]

for those who may want more insights about Kayo Dot, maudlin of the Well and Baliset, I would recommend checking out Greg Massi's podcast Color of Air.

http://www.colorofair.com/

Toby Driver and others have been guests. The podcasts are often pretty lengthly (1-2 hours).

[regenerativemusic]

Some of these newer prog bands sound like pop bands that have moments of chaotic, structureless stuff. They don't seem to play complex tuneful musical stuff like "prog" used to mean. So, I guess they get the "Prog" categorization because they put in experimental music.

[Baribrotzer]

This is the kind of setting I'd like to experience them in personally, in which you can actually detect that Yusuf Lateef-influence directly:

All of which strikes me as strange, because Toby very specifically says that there is no jazz influence at all in Kayo Dot. So if that music they're referring to, with blues/bebop horn lines and harmonies, and swing rhythms isn't jazz, what is it? Granted, his contention seems to have as much to do with artistic politics and a very tight, precise, carefully considered definition of "jazz" as it does with the way the music sounds, but still...

Some of these newer prog bands sound like pop bands that have moments of chaotic, structureless stuff. They don't seem to play complex tuneful musical stuff like "prog" used to mean. So, I guess they get the "Prog" categorization because they put in experimental music.

None of that describes Kayo Dot. Their music is sometimes noisy and "difficult", but never structureless. It is also quite often tuneful. Granted, they call on influences the old-time prog bands didn't, because those types of music didn't exist at the time - most notably, some of the harsher types of extreme metal. But I just see that as an updated version of the hard rock references that occasionally appeared in Seventies prog.

[Scrotum Scissor]

Some of these newer prog bands sound like pop bands that have moments of chaotic, structureless stuff. They don't seem to play complex tuneful musical stuff like "prog" used to mean. So, I guess they get the "Prog" categorization because they put in experimental music.

No, they get the "Prog categorization" (which they themselves in numerous cases would deny quite bluntly) because they relate 'progressively' to developments in rock music from after the heydays of Genesis/Yes/ELP etc. occurred - and they do this with both theoretical and technical means way beyond what 95% of bygone "prog" artists could ever show for. Many of them are musically trained (i.e. unlike the majority of "prog" musicians back then they can actually read/write/orchestrate etc.), extremely few of them would have any problems whatsoever in playing off 70s "prog" standards for the sheer fun of it.

I love 70s progressive rock music and I will keep collecting and writing on and praising it, but that was then - although their current counterfeiters are out there actively attempting to reclaim the past as their own presence. "In and around the lake [tra-la-laaa'h]", "One More Red Nightmare [la-laaa'h]", "Like father like son [laaa-di-daa'h]" - these are the "pop bands". As for 'chaotic, structureless stuff', let's keep wondering what followers of Bill Haley & His Comets thought of that debut King Crimson record in 1969.

Well, at least this goes for Kayo, Thinking Plague, SGM, Time of Orchids, Dirty Projectors, Cheer-Accident, Jim O'Rourke, Make a Rising, Normal Love, Stats, Cellar & Point, Jack O' the Clock, Chance:Risiko, Algernon, Pattern is Movement, Alec K. Redfearn & the Eyesores, Capillary Action and many, many others whose expressions didn't befall the 70s simply because the necessary source material didn't exist yet.

[regenerativemusic]

They sound nothing like the choices 5uu's or Thinking Plague were making at times.

The problem is on any given forum when you write about music and have to be critical, it makes you sound like a heartless person at times. I don't want to go into detail about why I don't find this music appealing, but I will at least say that "chaotic" was a bad choice for a word to describe it. They are making musical choices which seem like simpler choices than the ones that I find interesting, so in that sense, it's "chaotic" meaning less structurally interesting to me.

[Scrotum Scissor]

I don't want to go into detail about why I don't find this music appealing [...] They are making musical choices which seem like simpler choices than the ones that I find interesting, so in that sense, it's "chaotic" meaning less structurally interesting to me.

There's absolutely no reason whatsoever for you to make excuses about not liking or enjoying something, as individual taste is luckily a purely subjective phenomenon. You dislike it because it doesn't speak to you, the rest of us here in this thread do the opposite because it does.

But, uhm... "simpler choices"? I hear preciously little with any of the established names in 70s progressive rock which even comes close in matching the level of harmonic, dynamic, textural and structural density bestowed by that list of current contemporary artists I mentioned in my previous post. Genesis, Yes, Krimson, the lot - they dealt mostly in sub-binary song-form principles, added extras but still within the basics of repetitive patterns and certain variations on delivery and metre. With some very prominent exceptions (like National Health or Henry Cow or Magma etc.) they hardly ever explored coherent polyrhythmic movement as integral compositional tool, or disharmonics, lineary articulations of ostinato, angular dissonance as primary principle of structure and so on.

[battema]

Late to party...yeah, I like Kayo Dot. For me, I think Choirs, Hubardo and Coyote are my go-to choices. At the risk of being a sentimental sap, if I had to pick a single moment from Driver's works that I'd keep on a desert island, it'd be Interlude #3 from Leaving Your Body Map. FAR from his most sophisticated works, it is a simple little piece of exceptional beauty.

Minor factoids for the curious...

Technically, Choirs *was* meant to be a motW album...they changed names while trying to cut ties with their former label.

There was a CD release of Gamma Knife (I know 'cause I own it on CD )

To Scrotum's point about replicating their studio work live...the first time I saw them was just after Choirs hit in a little club in DC. I can't recall exactly but I think for the final vocal section (the more atmospheric outtro on Antique) Toby sang through a Kazoo to capture that particular sound.