Monday, March 25, 2013

Kinski...love this

Artist: Kinski
Album: Cosy Moments
Review date: Mar. 25, 2013


After a six-year hiatus, Seattle’s Kinski picks up more or less where Down Below It’s Chaos left off, building monstrous constructions of riff and feedback, repeating them to a Gnostic blur and layering on top some surprisingly melodic vocal melodies. Cosy Moments moves slightly toward pop-and-hook than the last Kinski album did, but more than maintains its integrity as an outsized purveyor of aggressive guitar rock. 

Over the last couple of albums, Kinski has made a transition from a dynamic-switching, mostly instrumental, experimental outfit – a peer of Bardo Pond and Acid Mothers Temple – to a more accessible, though still blistering rock band. The transition took a critical step in Down Below It’s Chaos with the addition of vocals – that’s Chris Martin singing – a step which led the band necessarily away from free-form, amp-torturing frenzies toward more structured songcraft. The model, maybe, is Sonic Youth, one of the few bands to balance experimentation and pop for any extended length of time. On Cosy Moments, Kinski continues to funnel noise and dissonance into surprisingly ear-friendly, easily grasped compositions. Even the instrumentals – and there are four of them – feel fairly tightly planned and structured. 

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